Beauty, Right Here (09.20.22)

Seek and find this remarkable view of downtown Saint Paul, from the public dock on Harriet Island.  (Directions below.)

Go at the end of the daylight one of these cool fall evenings. The sun goes down, somewhere over toward the Cathedral, and the skyline comes up glittering, crowned by brilliant red at the top of the First National Bank Building. The river murmurs at your feet. To the left and upstream, Itasca.  To the right and downstream, New Orleans. The sky is dark, crossed by an occasional small plane from the old St. Paul airport nearby. In the harbor behind you lives a beaver. The channel is home for a gigantic fish who startles by jumping and splashing, and immediately disappears below. A barge might go by; it is a working river. And it is a working city, even though it appears like a series of lit castles on stone bluffs, reflected on the water. Since it is the capital city, some are awake behind those bright windows, doing the people’s business, or their own. Up there, people are dining in good restaurants, going to the theaters, living in apartments with windows and balconies, listening to music, reading books under good lamps. Down here, you can see it all and still be startled by a fish. Welcome to the best view you’ll ever have of our downtown Saint Paul. It is beautiful.

Directions by car:  cross the Mississippi on Wabasha. Take the first left, on Fillmore. Take the first left again, on Harriet Island Blvd. Follow as far as you can go, until you reach a small traffic circle and  parking lot (that used to be for the vanished and much-missed Showboat). Park. Walk toward the water and the dock. Make your way past the Covington Inn Bed and Breakfast. Pause there to contemplate the pleasures of sleeping on an old tugboat, summer and winter. Continue down the public dock and look across the river.  Breathe.

Photo by the author.