Last summer, I got the chance to tour with Insomniac Folklore for about a week, flitting from venue to venue in Illinois before ending up at Cornerstone Music Festival. It had been a while since I’d spent any time in central Illinois, and I had forgotten what deep roots I have there. My mom grew up in the tiny town of Astoria, a patch of houses and a downtown in between miles and miles of cornfields. When I was a kid and my grandma was losing her battle with Alzheimer’s disease, we made the three-hour commute to Astoria every other week. When I got upset about what was going on, I’d take a walk with Mom or my brothers. The Illinois landscape and small towns became synonymous with that side of the family, with sadness, and with the excitement of road trips.
Although I had never been to Chillicothe, I immediately felt at home when we rolled into town. We played a show at a youth center, stayed there the night, and then had some time to kill the next morning. I decided to go for a walk.
Down the American-flag-lined main street I walked, the only moving thing in sight. The sky was gray and the heat oppressive, although it was nothing compared to what we’d face later that week. Like all good walks, this one led me to the river. I strolled through a park and stared out at the wide, muddy-silver waters. At last I saw other people: an obese little girl tried to climb the monkey bars on a playground as her mother watched silently.
I also saw a man sitting in an SUV with the window rolled down, reading a paper. I approached him and said a friendly, “Good morning. Do you know what river that is?” He just stared at me as if I was crazy. “I’m not from around here,” I said.
“Oh,” he said, loosening up. “That’s the Illinois.” He went on to tell me, in a slight Illinois drawl that made me feel comfortable, about how the drought was affecting the river. A beached barge on the far side was going to be their setting-off point for fireworks on Independence Day, if fireworks would be allowed. He pointed to a point far up the bank, beyond the tree line. “A few years ago, the river flooded all the way up there. Now look at it.”
After some chitchat, I said goodbye and continued walking along the line of the river, though I was soon cut off from the water by a line of large but cheaply-made riverfront mansions, set back from the road. It took me less than fifteen minutes to reach the edge of town on that side, and I turned around.
The birds, critters, and town habitants I saw were familiar too: ground squirrels, sparrows nesting, robins hopping across the lawns. Chalky-purple chicory grew next to bindweed (morning glories). A person turned onto the main road, looking carefully both ways on the deserted through-street before cautiously turning. Four middle-school boys stood in the middle of the sidewalk with their bikes strewn around them. When they saw me coming, they stared as if seeing an alien, and were silent as I walked between them with a polite, “Excuse me.” When I was several yards away I heard them whispering and snickering.
I found the river again and walked along it in the opposite direction, past a strip of wetlands, home to a blue heron who stood motionless in the shallows. On a distant bridge, a train rumbled on its journey. A river gull screeched overhead, and then I heard the first peals of thunder. At a nearby house, a dachshund in a backyard began yapping frenetically. The contrast of thunder and dachshund was unnerving, and I hurried my steps back to the youth center. I felt like I had touched something familiar, and the trip wasn’t over yet.
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