WHAT IS A RIVER

Where is a river born? A high mountain lake? A hidden spring that wise men keep to themselves? The trickles from a melting glacier? However it’s born it joins the great lacework of freshwater that eventually joins the ancient salt waters of the world’s oceans. Elemental water joins with sun fire and the vapors rise. Clouds form and drift. When the time is right, the rains fall and the cycle begins again.

But rivers and streams are more than the water flowing between the banks. It’s marsh and delta grasses that slow the floods and help to store high waters against the dry times. It’s the trees that shade the water and deadfalls that make hiding places for fingerlings and insect larva. The river is the kingfisher, the eagle and the osprey. The river is the mallard, the teal and the heron. The otter, the beaver and the muskrat. The river is the deer that comes to drink and the elk bugling in the water meadow.

The river is sunlight dancing through new leaves and the mist that rises in the early mornings of autumn hiding everything beyond the nearest bend except the water whisper through the reeds. The river is spring shower and summer thunderstorm, ice sprinkles in late fall and the deep snows of winter.

And some believe that because every drop of water is different, never standing still you can never enter the same river twice. And I wish I could find pictures to match what "saw" while I was writing this.