In reading "Last Child in the Woods," a thought provoklng book by Richard Louv, many quotes and passages on the importance of nature in our lives rang true with me.
But one was especially on target and should be for everyone grew up in Memphis.
Poet T. S. Eliot , who grew up beside the Mississippi River in St. Louis, said: "I feel there is something in having passed a childhood beside a big river which is incommunicable to those who have not."
I, too, grew up in St. Louis just one block from Bellerive Park, which is situated high on a limestone bluff overlooking the Mississippi River.
As a child from about age 5 to 11, I spent most of my summer days there participating in organized sports and arts and crafts programs.
Whether I was playing checkers, making a potholder or playing volleyball, the river was always there.
It sent cooling breezes up the bluff and provided endless fascination in the barges and other boats making their way up or down the river.
Everyday we saw the giant excursion boat, the S.S. Admiral, on its southward journey and again after it turned north to go back to its downtown docking point. We waved to the people on its top deck and they waved back. We could hear the calliopy, too.
Motor boats zipped up and down in front of us as well, sometimes pulling a water skier or two.
The view across the river was of pastoral country and agricultural land in Illinois and, thankfully, that has not changed.
In dry years the sandbars on the Illinois side would be huge. Boaters would pull up and sunbath on them. Other times, the river was so high the sandbars were invisible.
When I was too old for the kids program at the park but too young to drive, I would often walk up there with a book a hand and sit on a bench and read. As I looked up from time to time, the familiar view would fill me with a sense of peace and calm.
(click on "more" to see photo of the river from Bellerive Park)
