Yesterday I got to accompany my buddy Denise White Parkinson on a tiny pilgrimage.
Denise is the author of Daughter of the White River, a book which has inspired more than one new song from me in the past year, and which I am producing the audiobook of right now. We have a lot in common, as nomadic gals who’ve both found an unexpected home in the place that raised us, and we have a lot of shared big feelings about Arkansas history, conservation, and culture.
So when Denise, whom I’ll be supporting this Friday evening at her Delta: Rediscovered gallery reception in Little Rock (free admission, join us!) invited me to take a little road trip with her to see Clarendon’s historic White River bridge, I said yes.
The majority of local folks hope to conserve the historic bridge, which the Department of the Interior wants demolished, and see it become the landmark pedestrian bridge it deserves to be. I am told that demolition would cost the state (and the public) easily twice as much as conservation in this case. Learn more about the organization working to save the bridge.
Some of y’all know me as a child of many rivers, and how much that chosen identity has inspired me recently. Arkansas has several big rivers, all of them mighty, a little frightening sometimes, and gorgeous all the time. I’ve spent my life admiring them when I’m at home, and I have no idea how many times I’ve visited or crossed what I think of as the big three (The Mississippi, the Arkansas, and the White River) in my life. I still have Delta-born living relatives who remember the flood of 1927, and I am learning their stories. As a result of all of this, I have at least one brand new river song that I hope to release this year. Here’s a clip. Turn on your sound. 🙂