Skip to main content

Gayle Harper discusses "Road Trip with a Raindrop." This event is cosponsored by the Mississippi River Network.

“I love the spirit of this project. So many ways to wander this world!”--Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love

When Gayle Harper learned that a raindrop falling into the headwaters of the Mississippi would travel the River for ninety days to reach the Gulf of Mexico, she knew immediately that her project of a lifetime had appeared. Harper made a three-month-long road trip along the nearly 2,400 mile course of the Mississippi, while keeping pace with a raindrop called “Serendipity.”

She was offered lodging, often in places unique to the heritage of each region. There was a fishermen’s cabin in the north woods, a trendy downtown loft, a tugboat converted to a B&B in St Paul, a plantation mansion, a sharecropper’s cabin--and even an entire 30-room mansion!

Gayle wandered back roads without plan, meeting people in farm fields, on their porches, in cafés, even while stopped for road construction, who invited her into their lives.  She went to dances, birthday parties, a wedding, a powwow, neighborhood barbeques and festivals. She was invited home to dinner, to meet friends and relatives and onto boats of all sizes, from a canoe to a towboat.

“The people of this journey,” says Harper, “are the soul of it. They were welcoming, inclusive, playful, curious, colorful and authentic. There was two-year-old Hazel, who plopped down beside me to show me her green shoes, and 87-year-old Marshall Bouldin III, who moved me to tears when we talked about art. There was a north woods adventurer, a Southern Belle, a “river rat,” a Delta Blues man and a pixie-like nun. ”  

Roadtrip with a Raindrop is a celebration of America and of the simple moments that make life an adventure. In its pages are 55 stories, with nearly 200 full-color photographs. Together, the words and images invite us to leave our agendas behind, to travel at the pace of a raindrop and to rediscover the fine art of letting life happen!

----

The Mississippi River Network (MRN) is a coalition of 50 nonprofit organizations and businesses working together to protect the land, water and people of the United States’ greatest River. You can help take care of our Big River too by becoming as a River Citizen at www.1mississippi.org.

----

Gayle Harper has been a travel photographer and writer for more than two decades. Gayle’s home is wherever she is, but she is often at home in Springfield, Missouri, with her husband, Mike, and their cat, Louie.

 

Date: 10/21/2015
Time: 7:00pm - 8:00pm
Place:

38 S Snelling Ave
St Paul, MN 55105
United States