Okay, this is like free-associating on the couch with an audience, no?
        Had seen the Mississippi numerous times, growing up in Louisiana, but when
I was fifteen or sixteen, went with a friend and her father--somewhere--and
wound up riding the ferry across the river at St. Francisville.  About a
third of the way out, I was struck speechless at the sheer VASTNESS of it,
of how far away either bank was, as if we were out on a great inland sea.
 That power is what has always stayed with me as an impression of this
river, its very primeval force.
        But another time that comes to mind is, oh, mid-seventies, going right
down to the edge of the huge surging water in Audubon Park, New Orleans,
under a sort of pavilion there, with people going about above doing daily
sorts of things, with the husband of a good friend.  He called to my
attention the small relics cast up by the river--bits of old brick, old
china, and so forth, all recognizable, but worn smooth as stream pebbles by
their time in the water.  They were surface scatter, yes, but by virtue of
having been moved to that place and transfigured by the river, they seemed
dually the record of human lives and the very alive Mississippi.
        There are other impressions, but enough.