Rivers......

"River." I love the very word. There's a murmur to it, a melody, the word "river" sounds like it is, sounds like what it does...

In days past, I'd been a riverman, a boatsman.....long boats down the Ohio, steamboats up and down the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Yellowstone, the Columbia, the Snake.... Rivers are the life force -- the veins and arteries of any continent, any nation. And the names of rivers and river towns! The Mississippi, the Missouri, the Rappahannock , the Susquehanna, the Arkansas, the Tennessee, the Colorado, the Snake, the Columbia, the Lochsa, the Clearwater... Cairo, Memphis, Knoxville, Hannibal, New Orleans...Great Falls, Missoula, Kettle Falls, Walla Walla, Umatilla, the Dalles, Bridge of the Gods, Hood River, Portland.... I love rivers and I love river towns, and I love riding my motorcycles on the river roads alongside them. Many, many good motorcycle roads follow rivers: Highway 14 (the Columbia), Highway 12 (The Clearwater, the Lochsa), Highway 30 (the Platte), Highway 200 (Clark's Fork), and on and on..... it's spring; the rivers are awakening and beginning to move, and so am I... again, it's time to go....

I was there.....

I was with the Captains Lewis and Clark, and their chief guide, Saca-ja-weah; I was at the battles of Adobe Walls, the Custer fight, the Fetterman Massacre; I was at South Pass, and almost all along the Oregon Trail, the gateway to our modern nation; I was at Antietam, Gettysburg, Pea Ridge, Chicamaugwa, Shiloh........

Shiloh! Yeah, I was at Shiloh.....such a beautiful place name, and such a sad, haunted place. Sit down near Bloody Pond, near dusk....sit quietly and listen to the faint sobbing and cries in the gentle night air..... if you can't hear them, if you aren't moved by where you are, you don't deserve to be there..... Nossir, and those old boys's sacrifices were wasted on you....

Yeah, Bloody Pond, to which the wounded of the battle would crawl to try and slake their dreadful thirst.... The wounded -- some blue, some grey -- made their way there.... and then the muddy pond went red. Blue and Grey, but the same red mud, the same red blood.....

I've been where the Comanche rode, and the early Texas Rangers, with Walker Colts and rawhide bags of cold flour, riding just as hard, hunting their mortal enemies, the 'Comanch'..... Cynthia Ann, Quanah Parker, Charles Goodnight, John Coffee Hayes.... I've ridden where giants rode.....

And I've done it on my touring motorcycles.... Many of us ride bikes for pleasure, for distraction, for show, but I rode my bike because I loved it, and then, mile by mile, the motorcycle gave to me my whole nation, showed its history to me, mile by mile, county by county, state by state....... It was the best thing, next to Red, that has ever happened to me....that first, mutiple day tour, so long ago..... Thank God we took it!

Compromises....

I don't own a house on a hill, but I've climbed many a hill, and slept upon some in a whispering tent, among the flowers and the stars.... I don't own a Porsche or Aston-Martin sports car, but I've rambled through high mountain ranges on a powerful motorcycle, the thrum of its engine in tune with the rushing of blood in my veins....I don't live in a mansion, but I have lived for a near lifetime in a small house warmed by a woman's love, a house that has rung for years with laughter.... and I don't sit on corporate boards of high power or prestige, but I've seen the joy in a child's face over something I've done, and I've had young mothers bring their babies to me, just so I could see them....

Yeah, I've made compromises in life, not a damn one of which I've ever regretted....ever.....