A little gift from the river

The days I walk to the river - some days, if I remember to carry a plastic bag with me I pick up some bits of trash lying around. I picked up the habit from Joe (who'd go armed with plastic bags if he were going hiking; some stories there but another time). There's not a whole lot of it but one does find some, and it displeases me, and I like picking up the junk and dumping it while thoughts of different sorts wander around my head. Some days I've had to hurry over to the garbage bins lying next to the river trail having found and collected five cans of beer and a couple of empty bottles of whisky and rum just so that nobody imagines that I was downing all the stuff while sitting on the sandy banks of the river.

Today the wind was blowing furiously. It was a wind that was raising yellow, brown, and orange leaves into whirling dervishes. The blazing wind I thought was going to blow me off the bridge. I didn't really expect it to but just to make sure that it wouldn't, and just in case it did, I was walking near the rails. Just so that I could grab on to the rod on the rails if in case the wind got a little too playful. But it was warm too. Strangely warm for a November afternoon. And after walking around and a bit of climbing and racing down, and walking and looking all around the still overgrown banks, having a fairly huge and happy dog running towards me and barking merrily just when I was climbing up a sheer slope and all...near one section of the river where I decided to visit today, there were plastic cups and paper and stuff lying around. I scrunched up my face and went and sat near a bit of the banks for a bit. Did my usual stuff. Wrote a bit, smoked some, laughed a bit, and looked and listened. I got up after a bit, and armed with my plastic bag and another couple I found lying near the banks, I started stuffing all the plastic and paper and assortment of trash which probably was simply blown out of some open garbage bin. I had a merry time too. Walked all around, climbed up and down the banks and some of it required leaping around like a goat. I was talking out loud at some points too, and hoped that nobody was around to watch my antics. Found a discarded magazine in which I read about a young Purdue student, who started an I-Read program in Indiana schools, and it made me sigh and gulp at the same time. The magazine too went into one of the plastic bags...

But nothing compares to the delicious moment when I chanced upon a $5 bill lying there half-hidden under the carpet of leaves. I was so delighted, and I'm not quite so sure why....but it was lovely. I put that carefully in my bag, smiled widely, and surveyed my surroundings. The plastic bags of rubbish I deposited in a dumpster, and feeling quietly pleased I wondered what I would do with the completely unexpected $5 gift from the river and river banks....