I once said I would follow Dag to the end of the world. Well, here we are…
Whit continued, “Sure is impressive. But just too big. I think the river will be enough water for me, from now on.” He smiled at his river lady and tried to steal a kiss, thwarted because she gave him one first. Hawthorn only wrinkled his nose a little.
“The Fetch won’t go upstream,” Berry reminded him. “We’ll be walking home.”
“And all uphill, too,” said Whit, making a wry face.
“That’ll be one long walk,” said Remo, to which Barr added, “Yeah, I need to get me some new boots.”
Fawn turned from the sea to look out over the flat marsh, fading into immense hidden distances, and felt dizzy for a moment, imagining the wide green world tilting up before her feet.
“You know, Whit, it all depends which way you’re facing. This way around, it looks to me more like the world’s beginning.”
Dag’s grip on her hand tightened convulsively, though he said nothing. Together, they all slid down the slope of sand to meet the boat.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Feeling that my memories of houseboating on the Ohio River in my youth weren’t quite enough to support my tale, I turned with great reading pleasure to additional sources. I quickly found that while material on steamboating ran the length of the Mississippi, the earlier era of keelboats, flatboats, and muscle power was much less widely documented.
Especially worth sharing with the reader curious for more are: The Keelboat Age on Western Waters (1941) by L.D. Baldwin; Old Times on the Upper Mississippi: The recollections of a steamboat pilot from 1854 to 1863 (1909) by George Byron Merrick; A-Rafting on the Mississip’ (1928) by Charles Edward Russell; A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, by Himself (1834) (Bison Books facsimile reprint 1987); and, rather a prize because it was only printed in a limited edition of 750 copies, The Adventures of T.C. Collins—Boatman: Twenty-four Years on the Western Waters, 1849-1873, (1985) compiled and edited by Herbert L. Roush, Sr.
The Merrick, the Russell, the Crockett, and the Collins were all authentic firsthand accounts, immensely valuable for the kind of detail that cannot be found in general histories. I owe Russell for Whit’s memorable phrase when falling in love at first sight with a great river because I could not sum up those feelings any more perfectly and Crockett, not only for the flatboat-sinking incident, for inspiration for the charming character of Ford Chicory—himself. I heartily recommend this autobiography, which seems to have been penned as an early political memoir; its politics have been pared away by time, but its personal aspects remain riveting to this day.
One of the most respected writers in the field of speculative fiction, LOIS MCMASTER BUJOLD burst onto the scene in 1986 with Shards of Honor, the first of her tremendously popular Vorkosigan Saga novels. She has received numerous accolades and prizes, including, for best novel, two Nebula Awards (Falling Free and Paladin of Souls), four Hugo Awards for Best Novel (Paladin of Souls, The Vor Game, Barrayar, and Mirror Dance), as well as the Hugo and Nebula Awards for her novella The Mountains of Mourning. Her work has been translated into twenty-one languages. The mother of two, Bujold lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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