Living in the Moment

Frenchman's Bluff, a 120-foot-high cliff of limestone, overlooks the Cuivre River (pronounced "Quiver") Valley near Troy, Missouri, in the Cuivre River State Park. The Frenchman's Bluff trail, a 1.5 mile hike, runs first along the lovely Geode Creek inside the woods, and then emerges to this vista from the cliff top. Right now, bluebells and yellow bellworts in full bloom decorate the trail. The Cuivre River is about 40 miles long and empties into the Missouri River.

After a difficult week (for all of us; suffering seems epidemic) I've been doing my best to "live in the moment," just be alive and appreciate all I have and the human and natural beauty around me. It's hard, I complained to a more spiritual friend. She said, "Living in the moment is easy. It really is. It's just that we're doing all this multitasking and thinking ahead about what needs to be done and where we need to be next, and we've programmed our brains that way, and we have to re-program them to live in the moment. That's why it seems hard at first, but keep trying."

The Wide Missouri

Joined the local "Let's Hike" Meetup club to discover new trails, and they're all in my area. The group has many members  and usually about 10-20 people on every hike. They all come with many hiking tastes and paces and kinds of equipment. This photo was taken on the invigorating five-mile Clark Trail at the 7000-acre (no typo) Weldon Spring Conservation Area in St. Charles County, MO, about 24 miles from my home. Lots of persimmon trees! The river is the wide Missouri.

Confluence of Missouri and Mississippi Rivers

View from the Illinois side of the confluence of two of the world's great rivers. Right here, Lewis and Clark camped out for five months in winter 1803-04, training -- yes, actually training and preparing -- for the big journey up the Missouri. Finally they set out on May 14, 1804. They called this area Camp River Dubois. Down the road a piece -- maybe a mile -- and looking like a big silver dart stuck partway into the earth, is a 200-foot-tall monument with three observation decks: 50, 100 and 150 feet. Duke and me went up for an even more dramatic view of the confluence, the levee, and the oil refinery across the highway; it just opened this summer of 2010. Worth your $4. Just to look at the confluence is free. Located along Illinois Highway 3, aka "The Great River Road," some miles south of Alton, Illinois.

German Contributions to America

Visiting Hermann and other formerly German settlements along the Missouri River, one remembers the things German immigrants brought to America; how wonderful:

• Breweries
• Beer gardens
• Wineries
• The town band
• Oktoberfest
• Clock towers
• Turnverein (fellowship groups, like today’s “athletic clubs”)
• Bratwurst (and knackwurst, liverwurst, wieners, and so on)
• Dance halls
• Potato pancakes
• Music schools and conservatories
• Pumpernickel bread

Thank you!

Wine Country

Pictured, my old schoolfriend Anthony from New York State, born in Brooklyn. Yeah, he's Italian. In fact he's a professional Italian, so wanted to visit Missouri wine country, about 30 or 40 miles northwest from the Divine homestead. Particularly Hermann, MO, because it's a German-settled town and his wife is of German descent. Germans settled there in the mid-1800s because its hills and view of the Missouri River reminded them of the scenery on the Rhine River. Immediately on the south-facing slopes of their hills they planted grapes. And this picture proves that wherever you have wines, you have Italians. He's holding up a blush wine. He also bought me a bottle of port -- he said, "this is the best domestic port I have ever tasted--" I figure I should listen to an Italian. Because he can't take it on a plane I will be shipping him bottles of port to Ithaca, New York. Missouri has 78 wineries.