We cross the river several times a week, heading from Nebraska into Iowa and back again. It's a common drive for most of us in the area.

I always have my camera ready to snap some shots as we head back to Nebraska. It's often at sunset. I have hundreds of such shots -- spring, summer, autumn, and winter. I have a few early in the day, and some late at night. There is ice on the river in some, and the summer boats flying along the water in others.

Barge traffic stops about half a mile below this bridge, so there's never anything larger than a good sized personal boat out there. Sometimes there are even rafts.

This river has flooded the area far too many times, even after the dredging and other controls were put into place. It's not as wild as it was fifty years ago, but we still watch the waterline (quite high this year because a tributary is flooding just a few miles away) and make note of high and low levels.

But I watch for other things -- the clouds on the horizon, the setting sun and the occasional flights of birds drifting over the water in ways that are unchanged for several hundred years, despite what those of us on the land around the river have done.

In a picture like this, though, you can barely see the mark of man along the edges, blurred out by the coming of night. Instead, for a few brief moments heading over the river, you can imagine what it might have been like before the cities grew up along the river edges and the barges and steamboats plowed up and down stream, bringing more and more civilization to the area.

The land has changed. Even the river has changed... but the sun still sets over the edge of the water, and birds still float along the rising thermals to nest in the trees along the river's edge.

And crossing the bridge at sunset, for a brief fleeting moment, we can see the past.

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