The location of Missouri’s next proposed water park may surprise you. It’s not in a resort or even a town.  But it’s the doorstep to more than five dozen Missouri communities, and three quarters of the state’s population.

A few years ago, a veteran policymaker of national stature stood on the banks of the Missouri River, and he spoke what he thought.  It’s not the first time he spewed blunt.  I remember years ago reading Parade Magazine, the insert that used to fall out of your Sunday paper.  Parade posed a simple question to half a dozen Democratic candidates, falling all over each other to be the next president of the United States. “What’s your favorite drink?”, the magazine asked. Milk, one responded.  Tea, said another.  Lemonade.  Water.  Coffee.  Blah, blah, blah.

Bruce Babbitt said he liked Tecate.  That’s beer.  It’s brewed in Mexico. 

Babbitt’s answer was Trumanesque.  You may not like Tecate, or alcohol, or Mexico, for that matter.  But you gotta trust somebody who will tell you the truth.  Babbitt bared his salivary predelictions to the world, even if it meant losing the Women’s Christian Temperance Union vote.

So when he came to the banks of the Missouri River, I was all ears.  He doesn’t live near the Missouri River.  He’s from Arizona, a state which covets the river’s wet benefit.  Maybe that’s why his vision impacted me.  He said the Missouri River ought to be a national river trail.  It’s a vision many Missourians share.  Resurrect “Big Muddy” from the list of endangered American rivers.  And engage it, immerse in it, draw life from it, like our ancestors did.

Among other jobs as a public servant, Bruce Babbitt once served as Secretary of the Interior.  That’s a Teddy Roosevelt kind of thing.  The job is important to people who like wide open spaces.  Even today, his words carry weight.  And momentum is building to create the river trail, before the Dakotas siphon off all the water, and sell it to Arizona.

An old African proverb says that the man at the base of the mountain is the last to climb it.  Hard to explain, our innate propensity to postpone things indefinitely.  Especially hard to explain, when things postponed are pleasant experiences, awaiting. 

Find the Missouri River.