Another country

"Moonlight had changed the water to liquid silver. River lights indicating each point and bend in the river twinkled in the bottomland like fireflies. From time to time small fish leaped out of the water in groups, flashed white in the searchlight, and disappeared.

It’s wonderful out here, Trixie thought. The stars! The mist! We could be in another country…"

A passage from a book from my childhood, The Mystery on the Mississippi, featuring Trixie Belden and the Bob-Whites (sounds like a rock band...)


When I was seven, we stayed in a cabin on the banks of the Mississippi. We watched barges and other boats pass by, heard the boat whistles echo across the water in the night.
The next day my father took us to a sandbar island in a small fishing boat. It wasn't long after we arrived that the sandbar suddenly sank, and there we were, my brother and I, floating in the river with our orange life jackets ballooned around our heads.
My father caught crawdads and we fried fresh bass for dinner. That night a light fog rolled in across the river, but we could still make out the lights of the boats as they passed in the night.

We were, indeed, in another country...