A few leaves are yellow along the River Road. At Lake Street I cycle across the Mississippi. Now I'm not in Minneapolis, I'm in St. Paul, and Lake street becomes Marshall Avenue. And below me is the river.
There is a lot of water in the Mississippi River. Millions of tons of it, all in one direction. It would be funny if this water were the last if it -- this summer's shipment to the Gulf complete.
There is also a lot of traffic here. I sit on the cliff and unwrap my sandwich. A bus goes by, and the people in it look at me, and I look at them. Under the bridge the women's crew slides its shell through the water.
There are about a million people living on the banks of this river. That is a lot of people. It includes the people on the bus on top of the bridge, and the four women in the shell below the bridge. And of that million, just about all of us have looked at this river, listened to it, and thought about how special it is.
It would be funny if everyone had their special thoughts all at once. The cliffs are suddenly swarming with people. There are a million people "Future Shoes" of this river, looking down.
But it only lasts a minute. Soon the people of Minneapolis look eastward with feelings of superiority, and the people of St. Paul look westward with feelings of their own superiority. Everyone looks out at the suburbs with feelings of superiority. And the people in the suburbs look back with feelings of superiority.
My sandwich is tuna, although I would prefer corned beef. There is probably someone in town right now who is having corned beef, who really would prefer to be dining out, in West St. Paul maybe. And there is probably someone eating at a restaurant in West St. Paul right now who can't understand why the waitress is ignoring him. The waitress would rather be home eating with her family, while her husband wonders what life would have been like with that other woman with brown hair, from the same graduating class, who is right now serving her husband roast beef, only he wishes he were sitting under a tree, with a sackful of tuna sandwiches under the tackle box.
Today I'm on my bicycle. Yesterday I drove. The day before I took a bus. Tomorrow I think I will walk. However I travel, there's always a crowd. Looking out bus windows, staring at the fronts of elevator cars, watching the highway's dotted lines. And all of us have been to the river at least once because in these two cities the river is special.
And when something is special, it's more important than money. If only everyone could be special, and feel special, all the time.
I polish off my apple and throw it down the bank. It was a biodegradable apple.
A hundred years from now, we'll all be dead, the whole million. Well, maybe twenty people will be alive, but they'll be dead pretty soon, too. But these two cities will still be here. Changed, but not completely.
A few leaves will be yellow already again. And the river will still not have run out of water.
