A New World

It was a little bewildering to be out on the broad water with no hold on shore. Yet we were stirred with a vague sense that a new world was opening before us. It was the river never before known. The familiar hills and reaches seemed almost a strange country. Our boat became more alive, turning around in the slow swirls of current, and rolling in the waves of a passing boat with a free motion we had never felt when it was lashed to shore.

~from Harlan Hubbard's, Shantyboat: A River Way of Life, published 1977 by University Press of Kentucky