Monroeville, Ohio, state highway 20. Columbia, I-80 and Bloomington, I-78, both in New Jersey. Places we seek out, return to, back the trailer into a parking space as if we are visiting friends. As if we are almost home. They are neighborhoods, houses that have been homes for a hundred, two hundred years. And there are rivers: the Huron, the Delaware, the Musconetcong.

Monroeville, people working on a patch of flowers, daffodils, tulips, in the front yard glance up. Hello. They smile. They are not worried; they know where they live. Swing sets show the first signs of rust. Bicycles lay tipped over on the lawn. Monroeville, we used to get there more when you had to pay to go 55mph on the Ohio Turnpike. Small towns on hwy 20 lit off fireworks when the Turnpike raised the speed limit.

Columbia, there's a walking bridge across the Deleware over to Pennsilvania. The first time we cross is at sunset. We stand in the middle of the bridge. The foreground glows in irredescent golds and greens while the background lifts in palisades of a humid summer haze. And of course there is the river far down below: spilled pot of India ink.

Bloomington. Behind the houses the back yard drops steeply and there's the river. The woods starts farther out. One spring, we sit on a log in the woods. It's only long enough to catch our breath but both of us crawling with ticks. I yelp. I swat. I pinch. Each one, black, hard shelled. Eight legs times ten thousand racing for our scalps. We run for the road and stand picking and throwing. A moment to gut them between finger nails. I flick them off your face. You swat them off my arms. We power walk back to the TA and grab clean clothes and the shower bag. Thank-God-In-Heaven there is no wait for the shower today.