One of the advantages of living in Riverfront apartments along the Mississippi River is that at any time of the night or day I may position myself on the balcony in a deck chair overlooking the meadows and river beyond. If the moment is propitious, I am certain to doze. During the morning and early afternoon (say until 2:30 pm in the summer at the height of the season before the sun wraps itself around the southerly corner of the building), if the day is clear as it is today, the sunshine is indescribable. It pours upon the entire prospect with sometimes relentless commitment. It is not an enterprise which, in such ideal conditions, one is wont to prolong. The heat can become utterly intolerable.  But before it does, its implications are both perceptible and desirable.

Today for example there were meretraces of a white in the azure dome. As a result this morning, upon completion of my conventional 4Km tricycle ride about the community, and after having eaten my steel cut oats with an assembly of fruit, I determined to profit from the unparalleled beneficence.  Hastily I removed myself from my desk, slid open the balcony door, directed a deck chair precisely into the rays, sat upon it and promptly fell asleep.

Asleep is perhaps not the correct word; dozed or dreamt or ruminated would no doubt be closer to the truth. My thinking wandered aimlessly. I considered snippets of memories and remote recollections, as one customarily does in these uniquely ungoverned circumstances. What however was perfectly clear was the collection of sounds I heard.  Staring into the blazing silver orb does of course require one to close one’s eyes.  In this state of temporary removal from the immediate environment, my hearing was predictably enhanced. At first it required a degree of refinement and precision; but within time, as I continued blindly contemplating life, the repercussions of the unseen world became its own distinguishable symphony.

There were distant barking dogs, one obviously larger than the other, perhaps from the faraway farm house from which nonetheless the howls travelled unimpeded in the windless southerly morning air across the field of verdant burgeoning soy. By comparison, from the other side of the river, as far distant as the Old Town Hall, I overheard reflections of jolly exclamations and indefinable proclamations of the Puppet Festival (for which ultimately we owe thanks to Noreen Young OC). Many years ago (now almost fifty) upon my arrival in this incomparable country town I soon learned that the bubbles and noise of local festivals are ubiquitous, whether the Naismith Basketball festival in Gemmill Park, the summer fair or the Highland Games on the Agricultural Grounds, the Christmas music of Light Up the Night on the Main Street, or even the music from the Baptist Church along Water Street on a Sunday morning.

But as I continued to doze, uninterrupted by these occasional modulations of sound (some of which were admittedly not fully perceptible), I overheard as well the caw of a crow; the slap of a boat on the river; crickets; though not as yet any characteristic whines of the cicada; nor any mosquitoes thankfully; floating guffaws from people along the shoreline; the buzz of a fly. It all combined to stream me along the winding passage of my own river of thought.