My brother sent me a text with another sundown picture from the river the other night.
Postcards from home, you might call them.
I call them comforting.
As I told him in my return text, it’s comforting to know that he and his wife, Nancy, a Chamberlain native, too, have returned to their roots on a rare piece of property right on the Missouri.
The place once belonged to Rich Holcom, a commercial fisherman and consummate river rat who knew the stretch of Missouri for 20 miles north and south from Chamberlain as well as he knew his own spirit.
The two were pretty closely connected, that river and that river-rat spirit.
The place has changed hands a couple of times since Rich owned it. I think he’d be happy to know that Terry and Nancy own the place now. I sure am.
It’s secluded, yet right in the middle of town. And the sunsets over the Missouri are stupendous.
Terry “snaps” pictures of them from time to time with his cell phone camera and sends me one. And, often at my request, he gives me updates on what’s going on out on the Missouri 30 yards or so off his front step, and on across the big body of water known as Lake Francis Case.
That stretch of the river is a reservoir now, of course. But within the reservoir, the river still moves, although now it’s managed and controlled by the six main-stem dams on the Missouri, four in South Dakota and one each in North Dakota and Montana. So the movement is mostly imperceptible to a casual observer.
But it still moves, and still lives as a river within a reservoir, swirling noticeably around the river piers of the Old Highway 16 bridge just upstream from Terry and Nancy’s place along the riprapped river bank on the east side of the river.
From their place, they have a pretty good view of the comings and goings of boats on the river. And they note the shore fishermen whose presence on the riprap on the Old Highway 16 causeway across the water flickers at night with lanterns or driftwood fires.
The sights and sounds, smells, and feelings of the place have had an impact on my brother, who has never been much interested in fishing. Even back on the farm in our family bullhead-fishing days, Terry would rather sit in the pickup and read a book than stalk the shoreline waiting for a bobber to disappear.
But watching the process of boats moving past his place, especially when they do it slowly, propelled by a quiet little trolling motor, has inspired at least some passing interest in hooks and lines and fish in my non-fishing brother.
He sent me a little motion-picture postcard the other day, shot through the trees in front of his house, of a single boat trolling slowly, slowly, slowly upstream near the shore past his place, it's motor barely audible,
“Almost makes a guy think about getting a license,” he wrote in the text that came with the video.
I don’t know if he’ll actually get one. Seems like a lot of fuss for a guy who much prefers sipping coffee, reading a book, and gazing out across the water. But I like the fact that the scene inspired him enough to give it some thought.
There are many things of inspiration about my brother’s current lot in life along the river. And I’m happy he shares them with me.
I text him for weather reports from home, and assessments of the water levels or the fishing activity. He reports on that, as well as on the deer and turkeys in his front yard, the bald eagles in the trees nearby, and the waterfowl and raptors of one kind or another passing by above the Missouri.
When it’s sizzling hot back home, I know it. And when the winter wind howls in from the northwest across the frozen Missouri, I know it. Storms are announced, as are blue-sky days with burning sun.
Terry lets me know when the river opens up in the spring and freezes in early winter. He tells me where the ice fishermen cluster. And where the Canada geese group up out of the wind.
These are more than weather reports and outdoor updates. They are reminders of who I am and where I came from, priceless connections to our shared past.
My brother is back where he belongs. And so am I, in a way, whenever he reaches out to me with his cell phone version of a postcard from home.
