Platte

The Platte is a curious river washing over the gravelly remnants of the ancestral Rocky Mountains. Native Americans once camped and hunted along its waters, and later, European emigrants to Oregon, California, and Utah passed along the banks of this “Great Platte River Road.” The river was often described as “too thick to drink and too thin to plow.” Others were even less charitable; James Michener, in his book, Centennial, described it as a “no name river in a no name state.”

However, it was the center of my existence and gave context to my being. I was raised along its banks and spent countless hours in and around its waters, finding rocks and fossils, and searching for arrowheads. The rocks had once been part of great mountains that had been worn down to gravel and cobblestones through the eons and deposited across Nebraska by the river. It provided a smorgasbord of samples of those bygone peaks that I treasured as a young boy. Native Americans and European pioneers had also left their traces behind that inspired wonder; at times I felt as if I could almost touch them.

Though I no longer live near its banks, it is a permanent part of my being. As a child it was the center of my universe, and such it shall be forever.

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