By David Wilson, East West Gateway Council of Governments

The hearty canoers meet at Castlewood State Park, near the put in. The big trees in this flood plain environment create a lot of shade which feels good even early in the morning on this hot day. We will end our journey here, and so park and lock our cars, bringing just what we will want and need for the river.

The bus takes us up river to Route 66 State Park, formerly the site of the ill-fated Times Beach and Steiney’s restaurant. The Restaurant is now the park head quarters and the entrance to the park is essentially the old Highway 66 bridge over the river.

We drive down to the put in and a ranger tells the group about how Times beach was an advertising and investment scheme of a now long defunct newspaper in St. Louis. Subscribers could buy a small lot on or adjacent to the river for just a few dollars… who knew that 50 years later most of those lots would be filled with permanently occupied mobile homes; that the oil put on the dirt roads to keep down the dust would be contaminated by dioxin, or that a record flood in 1982 would completely innundate the town shortly after the dioxin was discovered. A federal buy out of the flooded town and clean up of the dioxin opened the way for the creation of the park.

We climb in our canoes and head off down river, floating north into St. Louis county. The sounds of the highway on the bridge above accompany us for the first several hundred yards, until the river turns and the quiet descends. Out here who could think we are in the middle of Missouri’s most populous county? Blue heron fly up from the bank, a large raptor flies over the river near the bluff ahead. Due to the angle of the sun, and distance from us, its body is dark and I cannot tell in the brief time I see it whether it is hawk or osprey –or eagle. Well, at that point I am thinking it is a very big hawk, but I do not seriously consider it is an eagle, until we reach the final mile of our float that afternoon and find a mature bald eagle in a tree at the edge of a large gravel bar. We stop to look as the bird turns its head and opens its wings as if to fly off. But the bird stays, and I marveled at how this is a visual confirmation of what I have heard - eagles are nesting on the river again! The eagle sits proudly as if to show off. We watch until the pressure to continue our journey overwhelms our awe and we shove off. Soon the eagle flies over us heading down river toward Castlewood and our destination…