This river has always drawn me to its banks. I packed sandwiches and sodas for picnics on its banks. I took my young sons on bikes to trails under the Camden Bridge where we stopped to skip rocks across the water. I took my camera there, to capture reflections and wildflowers and boys growing to men. And I bike or walk the riverbanks still, along the many trails that follow the mighty river. I look for the woodchucks, and the mallards, the albino squirrels, and the white egrets fishing from trees above the water.

It has been a stressful day at the hospital. I walk along the river road. The water, far below me, is visible as patches of blue between the tangle of trees and brush. I walk fast, the pace of a busy nursing station is slow to leave me. I pull a handful of red leaves from a sumac, the first shrub to announce the coming cold days. My pace slows as I turn a corner to cross the bridge. I pause half way across, lean over. I drop the leaves. My eyes follow one as it flutters down, down, down to the water far below. The current takes it and twirls it and pulls it downstream. It takes my stress with it, to Hannibal, to New Orleans, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.