coming home

John, his last day of work at the Sioux Power Plant in West Alton, MO

(His hard hat reads "Hitachi - John")

We have been home for about 10 days now and already our adventure to the center of America seems like a dream. We watch the weather for St. Charles, and it’s hard to imagine 6 degrees, or the brown and icy grey colors of winter. Meanwhile in Florida we are trying to heal our house (which became "sick" while we were away) and Jubilee, who has come down with a severe allergic reaction to the mold, pollen and dust of Florida.

I was touched very deeply by the rivers and sky and land and people of Missouri, and hope to carry them in my soul forever. I asked someone who had lived for awhile in Missouri if they ever missed living near the sea, and she answered, "no, because we have this big sky and endless land here." I understand that now.

We are grateful for the strange twist of event that brought this journey into our lives, and hope for more.

Snow

I know it's just a little bit, but hey, I've been in Florida for a long time, and it's magic to me.

11 degrees F this morning, the water in the lakes is freezing. Glorious!

Views from our windows this morning

Front view:

Back view:
More snow coming this afternoon and tomorrow ...

Winter is coming

John and I often muse over the how our eyes find the colors – browns and tans and oranges – so delightful. Perhaps being in Florida for so many years we got used to seeing the world in mostly dense greens and blues. Here the colors can be more pale and subtle. The most intense color now is the deep brown ground. I literally walk around flabberghasted. My eyes can't get enough.

Look at how different my walk along the Missouri River is now compared to last August:

They're calling for snow flurries tomorrow!

winter, birds and gas

It’s winter here – or it sure feels like winter to us. The temperature hovers in the 30s and 40s, but there is this wind … and we bundle up in hats, scarves and gloves every time we go out. Maybe we’re over-doing it. One of the neighbors was making fun of us the other day.

We keep going back to the North side of the Confluence - the Migratory Bird Sanctuary - where the Missouri River meets the Mississippi River. John says that we must be the only people who keep coming back. There are never very many people there. But there is a road there that goes right to the Confluence. It has been gated 4 and a half miles back, since we have been here. The sign says that it is closed due to flooding. It hasn’t really rained here in a while and I wanted to check one more time to see if it was open, but it wasn’t. We hiked around the marshy wetlands. There were a lot of geese and ducks.

Bird's nest

Meanwhile John's job, building a SO2 (sulphur dioxide) scrubber at the Sioux coal power plant, is ending due to a lack of funds. Something about bonds, and the environmental standard that made it a financially wise thing to do was lifted (by Bush?). We don’t know exactly when the job will end, but we have given our notice to the landlord. The rent is paid through November; we could be heading back to Florida any day.

Gas at our critter gas station was $1.95 a gallon today.

Update: The sign closer so that you can see the price!

The last warm day

I think that this may be the last warm day. It is quite windy today, and it is supposed to rain tomorrow followed by a cold weekend.

Jubilee and I needed to get away from the television and computer, and so much election talk, so we headed over to our favorite walk along the Missouri River. Our days here in Missouri are numbered, and I realize how grateful I am for the opportunity to live and know this place.

Be the change you wish the world to be ...

Election day, 2008 - a glorious day for America. John and I both voted for Barack Obama with Florida absentee ballots a couple of weeks ago, but we are still excited by this day, which feels electrified with a quiet charge. What a beautiful, sunny day, filled with hope for our country and our world.

This is the neighborhood Obama headquarters:

Meanwhile, though the little trees on our streets look to have moved to the "falling" stage, there is still much vibrant color around...

What is it about almost naked trees that is so astounding?

Autumn

I don’t know how to capture autumn around here. I just know that it is achingly beautiful. The grasses are yellow and gold and brown. The trees are all shades of yellow and red and some are still green. You can smell the overturned earth in the plowed fields. I never remember autumn being so visceral, something that I can recognize and know in my own body. They tell me that everything will change on Monday, when we are expecting our first freeze.

Somewhere I once heard the words, death is as gentle as a falling leaf. It seems almost miraculous that I can watch this, day by day.

Eric's visit

Alton, Illinois

Yesterday I took Eric to the airport. After 8 days of coddling and enjoying our 24-year-old son, we reluctantly sent him back into the world to be an adult.

We did lots of fun things while he was here … hiked, rallied, explored, and ate. He was as intrigued with the hard scrabble city of Alton as I am. This is Fast Eddie's Bar, known as the toughest place around. John and I will go back on the motorcycle for some pool someday. (John can run the table.)

The food is cheap, so there must be a lot of drinks being sold ...
Alton was also the site of the last debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas on October 15, 1958 (150 years ago, almost to the day). Douglas was arguing for the states' right to allow slavery, Lincoln the absolute wrongness of owning human beings. Lincoln lost the race for Illinois Senator to Douglas that year, but the debate brought him to the nation's attention, and he became president in 1860.

Weldon Springs has to be the best hike around here. We did the 5.2 mile Clark Trail and had the whole forest to ourselves. Wonderful views of the Missouri River.
Meanwhile, it is starting to get seriously colder around here.

(more photos on the Flickr site).

Autumn Geese

This is so utterly cool.

Every night, just at sunset (and not a minute before) the sound of cackling starts, and many flocks of geese begin hovering overhead. It seems that they are coming from the Missouri River, and heading north over to the Mississippi. They circle and even seem somewhat confused about where they are going. It must be that there are 2 rivers here, so close together. Eventually though, they all go north to the Mississippi.

It's starting to look a lot different around here ...

It’s starting to look a lot different around here. For one thing, the cornfields that surround us are not green anymore, but yellow and brown. It looks like they are waiting as long as possible to harvest. I’ve heard that this is because the corn will be used for fuel, and the longer it can stay on the stalk, the better.

And there’s a lot of water around. Hurricane Ike came through on Saturday night, and a lot of the roads are still flooded even today (Tuesday). The ground has so much clay in it that the water just sits there. The path that Jubilee and I use to get to the Missouri River is still impassable:
I am reveling in the change. Ever so slightly, the weather is getting cooler, so that I can wear blue jeans and long sleeves most every day now. No more air-conditioning! I am sleeping better than I have in 3 years.

[The latest word is that we will be here at least until the end of November.]

Confluence Park

We are living on the land between the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, just before they join. Each river is about the same distance, maybe 5 miles, away. It seems that we are drawn to the place where the 2 rivers meet – a place called Confluence Park.

In 1721, French explorer, Father Pierre Francois de Charlevoix, wrote of the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, "I believe this is the finest confluence in the world. The two rivers are much the same breadth, each about half a league: but the Missouri is by for the most rapid, and seems to enter the Mississippi like a conqueror, through which it carries its white waters to the opposite shore without mixing them, afterwards, it gives its color to the Mississippi which it never loses again but carries quite down to the sea ..."

This is flat land, wet land. Many bays and islands, and usually quite a few people fishing. It is also a sanctuary for migrating birds. Birds from as far away as northern Alaska use the Mississippi River as a navigational route to warmer lands.

I can’t wait to see this area later in the autumn. But already things are starting to look different around here. The sky for one thing. And it is cooler. Will it really get cold here??!! I’ve lived in Florida so long I tend to doubt that this season change thing is really going to happen.

So far, every time we have attempted to drive to the actual place where the Missouri meets the Mississippi, the road has been closed due to flooding. Today, though, we were able to drive as far as the locks. We hiked the “2 pecan nature trail” through tall grasses. It is a magical place.

Katy Trail

Not much to add here this week. The weather had gotten somewhat hot again, though the nights and mornings are cool, and I’ve been bogged down with re-doing our 2006 Tax Return. Ugh. (The Government says we owe them $8000!) The tires on the Jeep kept going flat so we got new tires today. John’s motorcycle due to arrive early this coming week.

Above photo is John and Jubilee on the Katy Trail, which is a 225 mile bike path that runs almost all the way across Missouri. Much of it follows Lewis and Clark’s Trail up the Missouri River. We pick it up just down the road.

Sunrise, 8-09-08

It was so cold this morning, I almost put on a sweater!

The Storm

Last night when we took Jubilee out for a walk it was 93 degrees (with a "feels like" of 105). This is what it looked like. Fifteen minutes and some wind squalls later, it was a good 10 degrees cooler. But no real storm came, and not much rain. However there was lots of rain and some thunder through the night. Feels very much cooler and fresher today.

Thunderstorm coming!

Looking forward to a "strong" storm coming this afternoon!

(In another life I must've been a "storm-chaser" :-)

The Heat

(I drink at least one of these jugs of tea every day.)

It is 97 degrees now, with a "feels like" index of 110 degrees.

All I can say is that the heat in Missouri is different from the heat in Florida.

Yeah, it’s hot, and I can’t see anything more than little wisps of clouds in the sky today. The heat is more intense than in Florida – more like a sauna. When we walk Jubilee later in the day, we come home drenched in sweat. Nightly walks in South Florida are balmy, delightfully breezy – tropical. Here, it’s just hot.

At midday, with no cloud cover, it’s bright here -but more clear than the "glare" of summer middays in Florida. It must have something to do with the water in the air.

Florida is definitely more humid, all the way around. The air is thick in Florida, and I’ve never so much as noticed humidity here, though everyone else complains of it. In fact, it feels "dry" to me.

But the heat is not constant here, like in Florida. After a couple of hot days, a thunderstorm will come through and cool everything down so that you might get a day where it never goes above 75, and the nights are in the 60’s.

One thing that has me baffled is the thermostat. In Florida, we keep our air-conditioning set at 80 degrees, and except for some nightly hot flashes that cause me to turn it down to 78, we are comfortable. 78 is downright cold. Here we keep the thermostat at 75, turn it to 72 or 73 and night, and it’s still hot for sleeping. I don’t get it.

Needless to say, I am anxiously awaiting the day when I can turn the air-conditioner off for good and open the windows!

Missouri Wind, Rain, and Mud

There were thunderstorms the other night. Missouri thunderstorms feel different from Florida thunderstorms. The light flashes higher in the sky, and is more diffuse. The timbre of the thunder is not as deep. I think it must be because the air is not as thick.

And then there is the wind. The mat before our back door (on the inside) was soaked from the 70 mph wind-driven rain. No one around here thinks much of any of this. But I was speaking to my neighbor, Julia, about the winters here. She says that the big thing is the wind. You have to figure out a way to walk your dog according to which way the wind is blowing.

I had forgotten about mud.

The ground doesn’t look especially wet, but when you walk on it, the mud cakes and clings to your shoes until they weigh about 10 pounds. And there’s no getting it off with a stick. You need a high-powered hose.

Jubilee fared much better than I did with the mud. After walking through a couple of puddles, she was free and clean. Maybe because she was born in Missouri?