I've known two rivers in my life, the Arkansas and the Deerfield. Relationships based on proximity.

My whole life in Tulsa was lived in a house on a street five blocks up from busy Riverside Drive, which paralleled the Arkansas. Riverside Drive was our most traveled route to downtown—or out of town. The river was a constant visual presence in our lives. As we approached it, the lights of the oil refineries, and the electric company with its eternal gas flare, glittered on its far banks.

The Arkansas River of my eighteen years in Tulsa was more sandbar than water. And it smelled like sewage. My ususal kid-response to shallow water was a longing to wade in it. Which almost never happened. The idea of getting in the Arkansas was more frightening than anything. To do that involved walking out on a sandbar, and the story was that you never knew where there was quicksand. Besides, our only access point would be from Riverside Drive, which was less than inviting. So we looked as we drove by. It was, after all, our river. When we encountered the Arkansas on vacations in other states, it felt like seeing a familiar and newly monumental friend.

Sometimes the river made water back up through the drain in our basement laundry room floor, causing enough of a mess to be a small emergency. Although there was a chance of it spreading to the closet and bedroom next to it, that never happened.

Once the river approached us by way of the streets. First there was an intense period of sandbagging, then the river rose and traveled until it was only two blocks away. For a while everyone was out, then the river returned to its banks. Soon it was mostly sandbar again. But we were left with the odd memory of men floating on the streets in boats, and the community feeling of all kinds of people gathered at river's edge on Riverside Drive, sandbagging.

After I left Tulsa, the river was cleaned up, the old railroad bridge became a pedestrian walkway, and people would run and walk and bicycle on new pathways between the river and Riverside Drive. The banks of the Arkansas became a miles-long park, the river a destination for the annual raft race. Once, I too walked across the Arkansas River, with Dad.

Wednesday afternoon we stopped for the night at an RV park in North Little Rock; we were happy to realize that we could park facing a river. This large fenced in parking lot ended with a grassy area, where an old iron railroad bridge rose to cross the river. To our right highway US 30 arched over it, followed by another old bridge that had been converted into a pedestrian and bicycle bridge leading to the River Market, surrounded by the city. Central sections of the railroad and pedestrian bridges were now permanently raised for barges and other river traffic.

Something stirred in me when I realized that the river flowing past us was the Arkansas. Hello, old friend. Connector.

The RV park was sparsely populated; we could see downtown and hear highway noise but were buffered by open land, the river flowing by, and a thick concrete barrier surrounding the RV park and a larger area of public parking and access. We had arrived safely, the GPS had been our trusted ally, the sun was shining, the temperature was in the high sixties! The following day we would be in Fayetteville where we had an appointment with Toyota to fix the Rav, and I would go with Jeanie and Bob to a performance honoring Gregory Hines with a "cornucopia" of tap dancing! Everything felt good.

The owner of the park rolled up in his golf cart and we began to talk. Andre was excited about the railroad bridge and was told that, at the end of the bridge on the other side of the river, was the Clinton Library. As part of an agreement with the town, he went on to say, the Clinton Library promised to convert that bridge into a pedestrian walkway. It was yet to be done.

I walked around the park, trying to see the Library—a smallish glassy-light building that seemed to be on piers. For only a moment, I experienced that so-near-yet-so-far! emotion that strikes me at times on our trips. Here was the Clinton Library! In a telephoto shot I could even see the current exhibit banner on the front of the building, but no way would I walk through the doors.

Somehow, under the spell of the day and the river and North Little Rock, that missed opportunity barely touched me. In a strange way, it was enough to be so close. I walked rapidly around the rain-puddled parking lot, looking at the other RVs, breathing deeply, taking pictures, thinking of Bill Clinton and his large life. The depth and breadth of his achievements could be debated, but not the expansiveness of his life. Because of him, the sparkling building across the river existed to hold his history; he had offices in Harlem, NY; lasting reverberations in Washington, D.C. A presence felt around the world. And we were in Arkansas, where he grew from a boy to a man of power.

As I approached the old bridge that could have empowered me to walk across the Arkansas River to the Clinton Library, I looked up at it and was forced to contemplate another person's achievement. I could see that bravery was required. Foresight. Strength and skill. Some could say that, as with Clinton at times, recklessness was also involved. Plus an ardent call to action that comes from the heart. At the top of the railroad bridge, glowing yellow, painted in strong block letters, was one word: Zoe. Reinforced in the same color and style by the phrase: I heart(heart symbol) ZOE.

Two people left their mark by the river. One known world-wide. One anonymous. I wanted to know the stories of both.