I just finished writing a paper for my class about a natural place that's special to me. I chose the Katy Trail/Missouri River in Missouri. It made me really miss the river. I haven't been back to Missouri since a brief trip in 2005, and I haven't really connected with the place since my week-long adventure in 2003. When I was in college in Missouri, I used to ride my bike on the trail along the river, seeking out solace and answers from the crunch of the gravel under tire and the slow whoosh of the muddy water echoing off the bluffs. I also wrote for a local newspaper about the management issues associated with the river and the threatened and endangered species that biologists were trying to protect.
This fall, it will be ten years since that semester at the newspaper. Knowing what I know now about watersheds, natural resource management and policy making, I wish I could go back and redo that semester. Rewrite those articles and write some new ones as well. Investigate more. Talk to more people. I was a budding environmentalist those ten years ago, and all I knew was that I wanted to protect the animals, but those darn corn growers and their barges got in the way. I didn't understand just how complex the issue was, and I didn't know what questions to ask. I didn't know how to be a journalist.
Writing this paper reminded me of how special that river is, and how much I enjoy writing when I can be a little creative with it. Government reports are not the least bit creative, I can tell you that much. I've been doubting my writing skills lately, and in fact had forgotten how much I enjoyed writing until now. Rachel Carson was a writer and a scientist, and she recognized that she had a special role to fill by writing about environmental issues in a passionate way that moved people to take a stand against pesticides and pollution. I still haven't found my role, still haven't figured out how I can have an impact. I just have to remember the river and hope that if I can keep my boat upright, eventually it will take me where I'm supposed to end up.
