I sat quietly on my ramshackle deck and watched the world slide by. It was a precarious perch, hanging 20 feet above the molasses crawl of the Gasconade River. It was my home.
Corncob pipe in one hand, Mason jar of hard cider in the other, I surrendered to the stillness. Herons fished in the shallows, and cottonmouths slithered across the torpid current, an “S”-shaped wake briefly marking their travels. Sharp-eyed bald eagles soared low in search of a meal. Mossbacked snappers sunned themselves on rotting logs.
Most days, I paddled upstream in my battered, aluminum canoe. A fine boat it was, a river-worthy craft perfect for checking limblines, stalking goggle-eye, and snagging channel cat. My feet stayed mostly dry, as I’d long ago sealed the old Grumman’s countless pinhole leaks with a slather of JB Weld.
Often, I anchored in the shade of ancient sycamores, playing fingerstyle blues riffs on a $20 pawn shop guitar. Occasionally, Ozark natives motored by in rusty johnboats; we raised our hands in greeting, nary a word spoken. Infrequently, usually on holiday weekends, city tourists floated downriver. They were a noisy lot, their revels fueled by six-packs and youth, but they made me smile.
I’ve rarely visited state parks or national forests. The reason is because I’ve tended to live in them.
While attending the University of Missouri, I resided within walking distance of Columbia’s Rock Bridge Park. My black lab and I took pleasure in adventures that would likely now be prosecutable offenses. We trekked in after floods, when admission was forbidden, searching for fossils and arrowheads that came gushing forth from underworld streams. He waited with nervous patience, stamping and barking, while I descended into sinkholes.
In my 20s, I lived adjacent to the Florida Everglades. Most weekends found me poling a shallow-draft boat through the mangrove islands off Chokoloskee and Everglades City. I fished for snook and amberjack and dodged gators, snakes, and rays. I sped toward shore as the sun sank low, fleeing black columns of ravenous mosquitos that spun over the tidal waters like midwestern dust devils.
The top of the world called during my 30s and early 40s. I crossed the continent, putting down stakes in Montana’s Beaverhead National Forest. Moose leaned against my house on 30-below winter nights, soaking up ambient warmth in their sleep. Mountain lions prowled my backyard, descending from 11,000-foot peaks to hunt the banks of a singing, willow-lined creek. My malamute and samoyed, cold-weather canines, sunned themselves on February snowbanks. My Aussie eventually learned it was unwise to bite porcupines.
I discovered my favorite home, that little cabin on the Gasconade, in the early 2000s. The Mark Twain National Forest comprised my eastern and northern borders, the river a third. If not for a family health crisis that required my presence elsewhere, I’d have never left. I’m not much of a people person but have always loved the hinterland sanctuaries lying on civilization’s periphery—those solemn, silently majestic jewels hiding in plain sight.
I no longer live in a national forest. That thought fills me with a moment of melancholy nostalgia, but it soon passes. I’m thankful, realizing I’m luckier than most, aware that most people never get the chance.
Happily, such wild and beautiful havens are timeless; they endure in abundance.
I can always visit.
This article was originally published in the September 2019 issue of Missouri Life magazine.
