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After watching the PBS special on Mark Twain, I became obsessed with the idea of moving close to the Mississippi River. Maybe if I could spend time along its muddy waters the muse I had lost would return and I’d be able to churn out one marvelous, witty paragraph after another, just like Samuel L. Clemons.  

I found an artist retreat located close to the Mississippi River. It was in Minnesota, far north of Hannibal Missouri, but I decided to take a chance. “The river is long and wide,” I told myself. “Somewhere beside its banks I’ll find the creativity I’m looking for.  

A year went by before my residency began. I dreamed of sunny days along the rolling waterway, waving to the not-so-far-off paddleboats, angling for fat catfish and smoking old stogies while lounging on a homemade raft floating inspiringly toward New Orleans.  

When the day of my departure arrived, I packed carefully: special pens and fancy writing papers, straw hat and baggy dungarees. I was a middle-aged, wrinkled Becky Thatcher. I’d find my Tom Sawyer in Red Wing, Minnesota.  

On my first morning at the retreat I asked the director, “Which way to the Mississippi?” 

He gazed at me thoughtfully. “Far,” he said. “ In fact, you really can’t get there from here without driving down the highway and turning left toward Wisconsin.” 

I stared at him in disbelief. “The brochure said ‘located adjacent to the pristine Mississippi’. I thought I’d be able to see it from my garret window.” 

“Well, yes,” he said carefully, “the brochure did say that. We are artists here, as you know and employ creative license. Bottomland is all around us, and the river was once where we are now standing a mere few thousand years ago.” 

I pondered how I would get inspiration when my incentive had receded before the Ice Age. I needed to come up with a new plan and get rid of that dorky Becky Thatcher hat. 

In the mornings I took time-consuming walks beside a small stream. I jogged down country roads, went swimming at the local Y, broke bread with my fellow residents, argued about politics, religion and the A’s and the Twins. 

I drank lots of red wine and ate too much iceberg lettuce, a Minnesota favorite. I sipped many cups of coffee at the local café and wondered how waitresses in this state can wear hairnets and smile at the same time. For motivation I read good books, bad poetry and awful translations. I tried not to think about sex, but it didn’t work. 

The muse did not arrive. 

One day I took a bike ride along an abandoned railroad track. I pedaled slow against the oncoming winter wind, brushed fallen leaves from my hair, listened for the sound of gray squirrels chattering within the crisp forest, watched honking geese fly overhead, passed three whitetail deer in a nearby field.  

“Maybe I’ll just keep going,” I said to myself, “until the muse finally shows or a sign of some sort tells me to turn back.” 

The trail was flat and smooth, the scenery brown and breathtaking and so I pedaled forward. A great blue heron by the edge of a still pond spread its wings. I wondered if it was the signal I was looking for but I kept going. 

Over a small bridge above a sweet stream I considered reversing my course but didn’t. Passing by a dilapidated train station I continued to pump the pedals. Just when I decided to bike westward to Berkeley, a shot rang through the forest, and then another and another. It was the sign I’d been waiting for. I turned my bicycle around and swiftly pedaled back toward the Anderson Center. 

Inspiration had finally arrived. It didn’t take the mighty Mississippi to turn me on. A loaded 12-gauge shotgun somewhere in the sheltering woods, carried in the arms of an amateur hunter, stalking wild things two weeks before the official start of hunting season had given me the muse I was searching for.