On the west side of the Mississippi, in Burlington, Iowa, it is an easy walk to the river from the corner of Sunnyside and Bittersweet. The entire route is either flat or downhill.  It’s even shorter if you cut through Aspen Grove cemetery but that’s another thing entirely, and I usually don’t.

Once at the river, the stroll along it, heading south, is both enticing and comforting, and yet always fresh. As I walk, I look over the water, across to Illinois where, in earlier times, Burlington residents boated across to buy liquor that wasn’t available at home.

The Illinois side is often underwater where it shouldn’t be. The town of Gulfport, for example, pretty much sunk in the 2008 flooding, one of those 100-year floods that arrive every ten years or so. Gulfport is, was, built on flat river-level land, and suffers because of it. On this side, only the first few blocks are flat, and the westward sidewalks and roads quickly climb bluffs and hills, so only the small low-lying area risks Mississippi immersion – which does frequently occur. Gulfport has, had, only a couple of blocks, all river-level, so everything essential was situated there. Before 2008.

But that is Illinois, and I am in Iowa.

      The elusive state of grace hangs low, tantalizing, but not low enough. Or I am not of sufficient size, height, stature, to achieve. It is there, or here, and I am not.  

      Grace wasn’t a word in my active vocabulary when I was younger and dumber. Now that I am older and the slightest bit less foolish, I wonder, imagine, caress it in my walking dreams, and in those rare moments when I approach it, it melts, another dipped cone at Dairy Queen, sticky and unsatisfying. At least the DQ moment gives me a brief tactile thrill.

      The Dairy Queen on South Main Street in Burlington, Iowa, is across from the tracks and less than a quarter-mile from the river. The river being, the river: the Mississippi. I remembered this DQ having a little sitting-area inside, but if it ever did, it didn’t today, and when I arrived, my body dripping with the 97-degree, 95% humidity after the two-mile walk, I’m sure I sagged a bit. But I rallied, requested one small vanilla cone dipped in chocolate, paid my buck-forty-nine, walked outside and turned back to the north.

      There is something about the crackle as the tongue breaks through the chocolate coating and enters the cold vanilla. As with everything, it was less satisfying than I would have liked, because I was walking and because the climate forced me to eat quickly to prevent a complete meltdown. And because life is unsatisfactory. Still, I’ve had worse experiences.     

      I was caught up by a BNSF freight train and watched, along with two no-doubt air-conditioned pick-up trucks, as the eighty-plus cars lumbered west. I stopped counting at about sixty and I doubt it hit twenty miles per hour. My fedora provided shade and sweat and, I liked to think, style.  I’d always thought it was a felt hat, but the tag says wool, though what I know about felt v. wool couldn’t fill a pixie’s thimble. In any event, I looked cool, perhaps, but wasn’t.

      The last of the train was more sound than sight as I crossed its tracks and angled east to the riverside walk. Now the Big Muddy was on my right. I once claimed someone’s eyes were “as blue as the Mississippi” and people scoffed: “It’s not blue at all,” they claimed. But it is. Not always, but often enough. Today, for example.

Two young men, far less stylish than even I, tattoos ablaze on their arms and necks, were parking bicycles along the fence. One tugged off his sneakers and socks and then slipped out of his t-shirt – revealing more ink-work – and handed it all to his friend. With a quick step he was up and over the metal railing, leaping into the Mississippi. From the top of the rail to the water it was a good fifteen feet and I was impressed. He held his nose as he descended, which detracted slightly from the image, but still it was something to see. When he surfaced he began swimming with the current, heading south toward the state of Missouri. His friend re-mounted his own bike, and started to pedal the same direction, carrying the swimmer’s belongings. The other bike was left behind. I couldn’t tell if it were locked and didn’t want to appear too interested in the answer.

      I continued north but glanced back once for the swimmer. I remembered Ken Kesey, and Ledbetter, and “Good Night, Irene.” 

I kept walking. One day I won't.