St Louis-Traveling With Mark Twain
Steamboats Come True
Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain, and the rivers still waiting on the bucket list.
Life on the Mississippi
Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi recounts his years as a steamboat pilot and his journey along the river between St Louis and New Orleans.
He writes with sincerity and irreverence, and his river voice still sounds like a dispatch from anyone reluctant to return to land, duty, and routine.
There is no unhappiness like sighting land—and work—again after a cheerful, careless voyage.
Move, Move—Move
My own requests were simpler: anyplace but here and I want to be surprised.
All I know or feel is that I am wild with impatience to move, move—move.
The familiar “twenty years from now” passage—often attributed to Twain—captures the operating instruction: leave the safe harbour, catch the trade winds, explore, dream, and discover.
Hemingway’s advice was blunt: do not travel with people you do not love. Twain sharpened the point: travel reveals whether companionship is affection or endurance.
That is the real test. Distance removes the polite scenery.
Heaven for the Climate
Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.
In Hotel @nyware, Twain became a recurring writing companion. His lines opened doors into travel, friendship, procrastination, cost, control, and the useful disorder of working at sea.
Liking people spontaneously and without effort may be one of the greatest sources of happiness. Cruise ships concentrate the experiment. Remove the fruits and nuts from the granola and all that remains are the flakes.
Travel can be expensive, but staying still also gives everyone one free trip around the sun. Procrastination is suicide on an instalment plan—though without the last minute, very little would ever get done.
No matter how many plans we make, life keeps winging it. Ship life simply makes the improvisation harder to hide.
Island Mix
Travel, cruise life, and the dream world that keeps falling apart whenever the dreamer wakes up.
Read Trip ReportFollowing the Equator
My Indian Ocean version of Twain’s journey around the world—and the claim that heaven was copied from Mauritius.
Read MauritiusRolling Down the River
Rolling down the river brings John Fogerty’s Proud Mary to mind. Another river song from his revival years, The River Is Waiting, belongs beside it.
Proud Mary
The wheel keeps turning, and the river keeps carrying the story south.
Listen on YouTubeThe River Is Waiting
The malformed legacy embed has been restored as a stable YouTube link.
Listen on YouTubeThe list now requires revision. The Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee, Snake, and Columbia rivers belong on the next edition of the cruise ledger.
The River Is Waiting
Ocean ships taught me to leave. Riverboats suggest another discipline: move slowly enough to watch the country reveal itself one bend at a time.