Last night we camped at a place of beginnings. Although we are in Montana and not very far from where I was born, it is not my home town. In fact, I am planning to do something that we have rarely done in the past. I am planing to just drive by that town and not visit it on this trip. I’ll be glad to go back someday. Perhaps I’ll take my grandchildren to see the house where we lived and the place I went to school. That will, of course, de-mythologize it a bit for them. It is hard to imagine grandpa walking miles to school into the wind and uphill when you can see it is a simple small town block from his house.

Now, however, is not the right time for me to visit my hometown. Just last spring we sold our folks’ summer place, where we all grew up next to the river. It was time. We no longer were able to keep it up and all of us live hundreds of miles away. So we put it on the market and now it belongs to someone else and I’m not yet ready to visit it.

No the place where we are camping is Missouri Headwaters State Park at Three Forks. It is the place designated as the beginning of the Missouri River. The Missouri is one of several rivers that have played big in my life. My cousin ranched on the Missouri River Bottom and owned land and ran cattle on both sides of the Missouri just upstream from Fort Benton, Montana. The piano that was in our home in my growing up years came from my Mother’s grandmother’s home. It was the second piano to arrive in the town of Fort Benton. It traveled there by steamship from Saint Louis, Missouri. Fort Benton was as far upstream as the river boats could go.

We lived and served as ministers in North Dakota and in South Dakota, two states through which the Missouri River runs where the time zone is divided by the Missouri. East of the Missouri is Central Time. West is Mountain Time. We learned to calculate the time to travel by clock time and not by actual time. For example, when we lived in Rapid City, I thought of the drive to Chamberlain as taking four hours and the drive home as taking two. Of course three hours elapsed each way, but if I was figuring out how to get to a meeting on time, I had to take into account the change in time zone.

I have paddled in the Missouri in several places along its run. We have camped alongside it in several states. For five years, our daughter lived in Warrensburg, Missouri, only about 60 miles from where the Missouri meets the Mississippi.

The rivers that create the Mississippi drainage system were, for the most part, named from east to west. Missouri is a shortened version of an indigenous word that was applied to the tribes that lived near where it flows into the Mississippi.

The Corps of Discovery, headed by Lewis and Clark were commissioned to find the headwaters of the Missouri River and they camped for a while near where we are camped, probably on the other side of the Madison River. They declared this place to be the headwaters of the Missouri and credited themselves with accomplishing one of the major assignments of their expedition.

David James Duncan wrote a non-fiction autobiography titled, “My Story as Told by Water.” I’m sure that he was familiar with Norman Maclean’s semi-autobiographical book, “A River Runs Through It.” Both authors know well the waters we have seen in the past day.

Yesterday we followed the Blackfoot River upstream from Missoula before going over MacDonald pass to Helena and then down to Three Forks. The Blackfoot is the river in Norman Maclean’s book. As in Maclean’s story, there were fly fishers working the waters. I have fancied myself to be a fly fisher at times during my life, but I must say that I’m less enthusiastic about it now that I used to be. Part of the reason is that the mysterious art has become popular. There were far too many fishers on the river yesterday. Even though catch and release is mandated for bull trout and practiced by fishers for other trout, there are too many people interested in having their picture taken with the fish before throwing it back, without considering how much it has been injured and whether or not it can survive. That is a far cry from the way I was taught to fish, where you gently cradle the fish in the water after it has played out. You stroke it and admire it for its fight. You thank it for its sport and gently slip the hook from its mouth before gently allowing it to swim free from your hands. Like other aspects of the sport, releasing a fish is an art. Real fly fishers love the fish and wish the best for them. They donate countless hours to stream restoration and habitat preservation.

With all due respect, there are too many Texans in the waters with thousand dollar fly rods for my taste.

The slightly rugged off grid campground at Missouri Headwaters State Park is much the same as it was when I was a kid - a perfect place for the type of camping we prefer. We don’t need a camping resort with a swimming pool and cable television to enjoy camping.

Being here is visiting a place of beginnings for me. The Missouri, along with the Yellowstone and the Boulder are rivers that have witnessed the story of my life. A river, however, is constantly new. The water flowing by today is not the water that flowed by when we camped here with my aunt and uncle. The mosquitoes that attempt to nibble on us are so many generations removed form the ones that bit our son when he was a toddler that we are the only ones who remember the connection.

I am content to allow the rivers to be themselves in their own way without the need for them to tell my story. Their gentle waters remind me of that story and it feels fresh in my mind today.