My River

In the summer of 2005, I worked at the St Croix National Scenic Riverway in Wisconsin. At our training session we were asked a very interesting question: If we had to identify with one river, one that we felt connected to in our lives or that was our favorite, which river would it be?

What river do I identify with? As we went around the room answering, I thought about it. Up to that point in my life, I hadn't spent a large amount of time on any particular river. I had never really thought about it. I didn't really identify with any particular body of water. But as I kept thinking about it, I realized how wrong I was. There was one river that was always there and it was such an undercurrent part of my entire life that I took it for granted without really considering it. But my river was always there.

My river is the Mississippi River.

The mighty Mississippi during record flooding in 2008, in Baton Rouge

Some of my earliest memories are of the Mississippi river levees in St Charles Parish in Louisiana, where I spent half my childhood. And of playing on the levee at the horse barn in Orleans Parish. The river was right there, just a very quick bike ride away for the first 9 years of my life. From the street in our neighborhood you could see ships towering over the levees when the river was high. And when the river was low, you could go over the levee to the river side and play in the "batture" - which is the French word for "shoal". All of that brings us around that the batture is "an area of shallow water, especially as a navigational hazard" (source) and that basically sums it up. It's an area that's dry during low water, often has flood tolerant trees and shrubs growing there, and would definitely be a navigational hazard during higher water. In the photo above the batture is from where I was standing to about the trees. The main channel of the river is beyond that.

When I was about 9, we moved further away. Not that far, not really, but away from the current banks of the Mississippi. And while the Mississippi wasn't a daily sight, let's be honest, south Louisiana would not be the place it is without the Mississippi. Lake Pontchartrain is an old Mississippi River delta, and the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain was formed by the Mississippi as well. So even though I didn't see the river daily again until college, I lived on the northshore, which was literally land shaped by the river. So really, I was still connected to it even though I wasn't aware of it daily. At the time I didn't know that Lake Pontchartrain is an old abandoned delta of the Mississippi, but it makes the time driving across it on the Causeway that much more poignant to me.

And then I moved to Baton Rouge when I was 18. I lived not even 2 miles from the river most of the time I have lived here (I now live 5.8 miles away if you're wondering). I learned in college that Highland Road is called that because it's on the first high land from the river. In fact, this road is placed conveniently on the natural levee that the Mississippi created on it's own before we built man-made levees. Natural levees are formed when a river overflows it's normal channel and spreads out, slows down, and drops it's sediment, creating ridges - natural levees. And Highland Road is on that natural levee, which I had never thought about before but for anyone familiar with that area, everything west of that road up to the river is much lower and floods so easily, including the LSU campus and nearly every apartment I had in Baton Rouge. 

The summer of 2005 when I went to work in Wisconsin, I didn't really think about it at the time but I basically went straight north along the Mississippi to get there. The Namekagon River, where I spent much of my time, is a tributary of the St Croix River. Which is a tributary of the Mississippi River. It all comes full flow. Not full circle though, because rivers don't work like that. It's really remarkable to me how things can be so interconnected and our lives be so influenced by factors that we sometimes aren't even aware of it.  

Just the other day, I hadn't seen the river in a few days and kind of just wanted to say hello. It was wrapped in a thin haze of fog, and looking awfully high for January, but nonetheless it's still my river. 

So all my life I have either lived practically within sight of the river or on land the river created a long time ago. I'm amazed at how my river has influenced me so much - my memories, my life, my state, my passions, my fears, my career, and the land I've always lived on. What is your river and how has it influenced you?