One of the best parts of working on a book is the research – specifically the road trips to locations we’re writing about. Hard to believe that eight years ago Damming the Osage was still just the “Osage River book” and we were still photographing out of the way places that were key sites along its banks. The first week of March 2008, we roamed the north side of what is now Truman Reservoir from Clinton to Warsaw and spots in between.
We struck up a conversation with a man from Monegaw Springs who pronounced it ‘Mon-e-goh.’ He was not happy with the state of the river since Truman Dam closed. The lake near them had become a “willow-nasty-ass bottom.” He told us about “Cemetery Ridge” near Monegaw. We hiked through the woods along the ridge (“if you get to the slough you’ve gone too far”) and found a few tombstones leaning against trees, scattered in the woods. Possibly others were stolen as there appeared to be more receivers for the headstones than there were stones.
Through the trees we caught a glimpse of the backed up waters of the Osage/Truman. The resident of Monegaw was accurate in his descriptor – mud flats were indistinct edges to the trapped water. Dead tree trunks, broken branches stuck up from the mud. Lost life stories and the lost river …
