The Mo

The river is lower than is has been in many months now; It goes even lower every day. Those log-jams and sandbars that we love so much are becoming accessible to anyone willing to brave the cold.
At Parkville, not too far upstream of kansas city, this means that all of my favorite sandbars have a fresh stock of trash and treasures piled where nobody else has looked!

To find the spot, head to parkville and hang a left. At the river, in between some farm-land and a baseball field you can park. Here, you are on the channelized side of the water and a worthy sandbar requires only about a mile's walk upstream on the fenced-off dirt road. There are plenty, but even now, at 7.7ft, many of the gravel bars are submerged.

I found the ordinary- tires, the four-wheeler, a scummy boot and a surplus of plastic bottles. Among my finds, however, were several interesting and even beautiful things. (this is the treasures-part of the river!)
Five and a Half little mushroom heads sat on a soggy piece of driftwood. They resembled some rusty-coloured oyster mushrooms and they didnt smell too bad. I took none.
A dead gar- slender and pointed with teeth that belong in a nightmare. The creature certainly has it's place near the top of the food chain! A pair of whatever that colourful stone is that is common almost everywhere downstream of here- fire opal? Carnelian? Agate? One is definitely a fiery-red and the other is more of an amber-colour; both of today's stones are fairly translucent.

There was (still is!) a beautiful old wine bottle that has been polished gently there on the nearest sandbar. The aqua-blue glass stands tall with a very long, thin neck and a bulky base. no date or any kind of markings that would give any clues to its origins, but the thing should be interesting and pretty nonetheless. For a further look into our rivers' history, it would be easy enough to dig up some old bones or pottery. Most of the skulls, ribs or vertebrae you'll find on these greasy beaches have been dyed a nice red, similar to the colour of the mushrooms, by the clays that they have been fossilizing in. Some of them may have been brought south by the last bout of glaciers- most died here near the river during the last ice age. Whatever creatures they belong to lived and traveled along the protective river here, where the ice was the furthest south it would be. I see alot of bison and deer, and even some bones that came from a mammal much larger. One thoratic vertebra here at the water's edge on the second sandbar measured over two feet!
Pottery is white, glazed or brown clay decorated with whatever markings and patterns it's modern culture thought fit to put on it. Today's nicest find, a hand-sized hunk of clay pottery has primitive bands of geometric patterns etched into it. Handfuls of cracked and shattered cups and dishes litter the bed where the gravel is most coarse. Much of it displays an english-looking blue pattern of complex, rounded vines and leaves, birds, people and trees.
I am surprized and disappointed at the complete lack of any waterfowl or even an eagle on my several visits to the river this week!

The banks of the missouri are covered in honeysuckle, garlic mustard and impermeable surfaces- here, anyway. The whatever-plant across the river spews gallons of dirty, steaming water where the fish like to stay. A big pipe drools an unpleasant tan syrup not too far upstream from the city's park and all sorts and kinds of joggers and walkers and runners enjoy their scenic rip-rap for miles of trails and river.