ESPN

IOWA — Lightning was my flashlight.

With every flash I moved closer.

One step with lightning from sky to ground. Two steps when the flashes tickled the underbelly of the clouds.

I knew where I was going but I couldn't see my way in the dark.

I could hear it, I could smell it, I knew it wanted me, and I wanted it.

No fear, just respect both ways.

Some came here for the Bassmaster Tournament.

I came halfway across the continent as a pilgrimage.

This was a bucket-list walk I was taking, within four steps of a lifelong goal.

And I stopped.

Slowly I pulled the green plastic rain hood off my head and I let the wisp of rain, the mist of a storm gone by, gather on my forehead and trickle down both sides of my nose and through my mustache.

I did nothing to wipe it away.

I would face the sunrise covered in remnants of the night.

An adult of the morning, I was a child of the night. The daylight belonged to others, the night belonged to me. My world began with a kiss on the cheek, a gentle tucking in, my mother's perfume, my father's cologne stuck on the nite-lite.

When the door closed, my bedroom came alive with horses, whales, Vikings, cowboys and dinosaurs, all under the spotlight of a metal olive colored Cub Scout flashlight.

As soon as I could no longer hear the footsteps of my parents, I would reach under the bed, my knees would bend up, and under the cave of sheets I would push the flashlight slide button up, and the entertainment would begin.

With books.

I fell asleep to The Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, The Swiss Family Robinson and once in awhile, Mad Magazine.

But as I walked forward with the mist droplets running down my neck, there was only one person on my mind.

One person from the cave of the Hop-A-Long Cassidy sheets.

And as I took those last few steps, it was all for him. The person who took me the farthest in my childhood dreams.

So I stood there with my eyes closed in my new rain suit, my khaki shorts and old boat shoes as the Mississippi River ran between my toes and over my white ankle socks. Homage to the river that gave life to a child's imagination and took me on a lifelong journey through books.

And I opened my eyes and wiped the river mist away and stood there at the end of the boat launch and waited for the sunrise.

All the while watching, and hoping, that a boy named Huck would float by in the early morning Mississippi River mist.

Welcome to Iowa

Seeing forever is a sport in Iowa.

It is so flat, and you can see so far, that when you look in your rearview mirror, you can almost see yesterday.

It's a state with trains that take 17 minutes to go by the front of your truck, with barges that dwarf football fields, and butterflies with stripes.

And a river that giveth and taketh away,

It's a look-you-in-the-eye state. Here, there's no cover, no place to hide.

At a campground filled with the wives and children of the Bassmaster Elites, a Park Ranger came by with an armful of "sheds," deer antlers he had found while patrolling the woods.

Ranger Clint told me that he carves them and gives them as gifts to family members so they have "real treasures not something store wrapped."

Like the land they live on, the people here in Iowa are just as open.

In the shadow of The Great River Bridge, the span over the great river below and the gateway between Illinois and Iowa, I met an elementary school teacher, a metal worker, a barber and a hairdresser, all third generation Iowans.

When I asked them what they like about living in Iowa the most, all they did was point behind me, to the Mississippi River running behind my back.

"During the summer we are on it almost everyday," while Nathan Mehaffy was telling me this, behind him his brother, Noah, never took his eyes off the river.

"Honestly, sometimes we take it for granted and then we see all the tourists who come here and just stand and watch it and we realize that right there is the legendary Mississippi River."

And the river of my dreams.

— db

Don Barone is an award-winning outdoor writer and a member of the New England Outdoor Writers Association and is also a member of the Outdoor Writers Guild of the U. K.. You can reach db at www.donbaroneoutdoors.com

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