When the Corps of Engineers opened the McClellan-Kerr lock and dam navigation system for the Arkansas River in 1971, the river effectively became a series of pools, controlled for commerce and flood control as it wends its way to the Mississippi River. As an economic engine, the plan has been successful, but the barge traffic and development along the river have greatly changed the character of the Arkansas.
However, happily, above the Wilbur Mills Dam on the Arkansas, the Arkansas Post Canal diverts water for barge traffic to the White River, then down to the Mississippi. The outcome of this design is that the remaining 40 miles of the Arkansas, downstream of this last dam, remains a wild and scenic river, maintaining much of the unspoiled character of an earlier day.
Putting in at Callie Lake south of Yancopin, my husband and I paddled a portion of this section recently (as we have several times over the past 30 years) and were thrilled to find it remarkably always changing and yet unchanged.
Herds of deer, curious enough about us to come near unafraid, still roam the sand bars and then silently slip into the hardwood forests, water fowl of every feather feed along the shore, and fish the size described in early explorers' journals still roil the waters. We saw no other humans on the river.
Slowly getting the knots out of our shoulders and the concerns of home out of our heads, we gradually fell into the rhythm of the river as we drifted along and took our peanut butter lunch in a piece of shade on the sand.
Time spent on a river provides empty space and the chance to let our minds drift as well. My thoughts turned to a recent email.
In it, our granddaughter sent us her Great Books Senior Reading Anthology, developed for her summer program at the University of Chicago's Lab School. All the conventional canon (Plato, Plutarch, the Gettysburg Address) was there, but I was puzzled by the fact that the list led off with a work I did not recognize by name: the poem "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus.
Curious, I Googled it, and was reminded that it was written as a fundraiser for the Statue of Liberty, first read at the monument's opening in 1883. Of course ... "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Every school child has committed this poem to memory. It hangs inside the Statue of Liberty.
This new "colossus," Lady Liberty, the poet writes, "Glows world-wide welcome," denying the "old " Colossus, which she describes as a "brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land." The title is a reference to an iconic statue, the Colossus of Rhodes, a representation of the Greek sun god Helios to celebrate the defeat of the city of Cyprus by the city of Rhodes in 280 BC.
Floating free on the river, I recognized this brazen giant, this man with "conquering limbs." Floating free on the river, thoughts of the poem reminded me that there always seems to be old Colossi, who measure their fame solely by power, by a show of wealth, and their own hubris, and who loudly claim their own nobility as sun-gods.
Our current Colossus fits the mold well with his fascination with all things "bigly" and "huge." It seems fitting that the statue, Colossus of Rhodes, collapsed in upon itself during an earthquake in 226 BC.
Floating free on this free-flowing Arkansas, the image of our country awakening from the stupor of the old Colossus, especially with the irony of the immigration debate perhaps being the catalyst of that awakening, gives me hope that we too stand at "sea-washed, sunset gates," recognizing that until all of us are free, none of us is completely free.
It was truly a lovely day.
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Dana Steward is a retired writing teacher from Sherwood and editor of the nature anthology, A Rough Sort of Beauty: Reflections on the Natural Heritage of Arkansas.
Editorial on 09/06/2018