99 Words for 99 Days: July 19

44. Columbia

The most surprising part of a surprising day was the drive. New job training, new location, new people, new procedures . . . but none of these things surprised me as much as the river today. My first day at that job, and the electricity went down, and the library's own computer records system crashed briefly, and the public computers got error messages and went completely nuts. But the river. The deeply life-flowing water on its way to the sea – the river was near me. I drove on the highway beside it, and the river knew my name.