Most think el Rio de la Santisima Trinidad – Texas’ Trinity River – is a toxic stream of city-drained filth. I understand.

Paper and plastic hanging from trees along its river bank, deposited by floodwaters raging 10 and 20 feet above the normal flow level, and gobs of trash aligning its banks, and the color of its water, and its musty smell, along with other unmentionable things, can reinforce this stereotype.

But it’s not my stereotype.

Well, ok, cities can use rivers for toilets. Everything from city streets gets flushed into a river after a rain. Plus, other toxins have likely leached into soils below cities, and thus into the water which slowly ejects from that soil. One can only imagine what one would see on the river bottom with X-ray vision.

I’d boil the water before drinking it.

But the Trinity water’s green color and musty smell isn’t form pollution, and pollution’s not pouring into it 24/7. Even if you were to swim in it, as I have, you’d (likely) be fine. Thus, most people’s stereotype isn’t mine.

That’s why, once upon a time, on a sunny day in May, when the light and air were perfect, and drops of water pleasantly dripped onto my clothes, that Trinity’s current steadily pushed my canoe through straightaways and bends, and left me with energy to stare at a warm, green world so utterly different than the cityscape – and often UGLY cityscape – surrounding it.

Truly, truly, truly, once upon a time, Creation revealed to me that there exist wonder and fascination often right under our noses – like in the form of a river flowing through a city named Dallas – that not 1 person in 50,000 (or 100,000) would ever seek to experience. But the Creator allowed me to experience, and create one of the happier memories in my entire life.

It was an odyssey. From Sylvan Ave, west of Downtown, to Loop 12, south of Downtown, I canoed with a group of people an a perfect day in May that I still look quite fondly upon for how it changed me.

You can say I am exaggerating. But why in the hell would I exaggerate about this?

I know that when my foot stepped onto the Trinity’s sandy bank to end this 4-hour odyssey, I felt the same disappointment that a kid leaving Disneyland would have felt. Yet, I instantly felt gratitude for this new experience. The beer afterwards was nice too.

Whereas canoeing the entire Trinity from its headwaters in the Cross Timbers to the Gulf of Mexico once sounded thrilling, now its sounds way too laborious.

Seeking bois d’arc islands, old locks, gar, gators, huge oaks, huge cypress, and plants blooming in summer to give it a supposed tropical feel, by paddling a canoe sounds way too laborious. No way, now.

But the excitement to do just that did inspire other odysseys.