5/31/2023 0 Comments William leastYet having retreated inland to drown his sorrows with friends at his hometown Trattoria haunt, Heat-Moon found himself growing determined to continue his journey. The deluge might have seemed a message from the gods to terminate an arduous quest. Yet now torrential floods had driven him aground near the mid-point of his journey - and also, coincidentally, only 90 minutes from home. Ahead, he hoped, lay challenging whitewater on the far side of the Continental Divide. Near disasters in New York harbor and on the Erie Canal lay behind him, as well as more placid moments on the Allegheny and the (sadly polluted) Ohio. The cartographically obsessed writer has been known to stare at just such a pattern, on just such a wall, right above a favorite table at the Trattoria Strada Nova, one of his favorite restaurants in Columbia, Mo., the Midwestern college town where he has lived for years.Ĭolumbia - at the center of the map and of Heat-Moon's imagination - also happens to be the place where, as the writer chronicles in River-Horse: A Voyage Across America - out next month from Houghton Mifflin - high water on the Missouri River brought his morale to a low ebb as he sought to navigate the nation's waterways from coast to coast in less than a year.
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