What is a river but a flood of stories

Land of Little Rain, by Mary Austin, 1910.

Cultural History

"What is a river's relation to rivalry?"

If we say it is a number of persons forming competing groups we have to understand that the original rival is the person on the opposite bank of a river:

1. Upstream owners: Claimants to sources of wealth.
2. Downstream owners: Claimants to residuals of wealth.

A Linguistic approach is impossible to ignore;

"Rivers are more than flowing waters -- draining the uplands on their way to the sea. But "rivers as a riparian ecosystem" muddles the distinctions we need to make between functional and evolutionary units that equally influence the life along the river. That is because animals that use the river, such as beavers, otters, salmon or wading birds depend on a complex food web. A functionally intact river supports fisheries, birds and other animals because the capacity of the river to concentrate and disperse nutrients simultaneously.

Over generations animals adjust to the constraints because to survive they partition the resources that rivers make available. In dry seasons and in flood seasons the extremes condition species that make up the ecological communities. The food webs that these species depend upon adjusts to the quality, quantity, timing and distribution of water, oxygen and trace elements needed by all the populations nourished by the river and its adjacent swamps, floodplain and forests. The more each of these related parts of the river are functioning units the greater ability populations have to adjust to changes in the river over time. The concept here is resiliency, without adjacent wetlands and forests, rivers are less capable of supporting large populations and there exists a greater threat to species whose descendents depend on the river's bounty.

rivalry in the use of resources.

"Rivers as resources" is a phrase that also ignores the intrinsic, or inherent ways that landscape shapes the watershed laced by rivers and streams and how rivers and streams bring life to a watershed.

Rivers nourish the land and the rainfall shed across the surface and under the ground feeds the flow of the river. The term watershed , literally refers to the entire terrain onto which flowing water sculpts a basin that drains in to a single river system from innumerable smaller tributary streams. Without underground seepage of rainfall and the surface runoff that comes with snow and precipitation the capacity for vegetation to colonize the landscape is severely limited.

The delta of the Nile River was called the Land of Goshen.

Nile river deltas In Egyptian mythology the river is the origin and continuous source of life, because rising high in the Ethiopian highlands and in the highlands of Lake Victoria, the nile floods annually. Fed by the seasonal monsoons in the African highlands from moisture derived out of the India Ocean, the headwaters of the Nile River flow north and inundate the valley leaving enormous amounts of silt behind. This deposition called alluvium is rich in organic material that replenishes the flood plain where farming is intensely practiced. Here, in the alluvial mud of the Nile Delta, Isis–the ancient goddess–finds the serrated parts of her lover Osiris' dismembered body. The god must await here gathering all of his body parts and she then reassembles his remains. Isis breathes life back into the corpse through intercourse.

In this sense the overflowing river reconnects the fragmented region represented by Osiris scattered remains. Like Isis, rivers tether fragmented landscapes, re-impregnate the dead soil with nourishing trace elements gathered all along the valley and deposit silt all along the levees on down into an awaiting delta or devouring sea.

Hence, the oldest meaning of the the term river reveals a profound hope, a bitter warning, and a commitment to renewal. Often beyond comprehension, people are deeply aware of the river as a nearly immortal power with respect to mortal humans.

The river literally and figuratively holds for us a promise, in the Bible it is the twin promise of redemption and sustenance, the promise to a desert people that the land is renewed by divine grace.

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The historical understanding of the term river in human ecology

1, rivers as the site of settlements: from hamlets to metropolises

2, rivers as sources of agricultural, fishery and wildlife resources (Mitchell, Marsh, Baird, Bache)

3, river as a system of transportation -- 1820s to 1890s (Ellet, Powell)

4, conservation of rivers as watershed (1890s -1930s) relational and place based comprehensive riverine management (McGee, Pinchot, Roosevelt)

5, rivers as a self-organizing microcosm (1910s - 60s) Leopold metaphor of Round River (1940s)

6, rivers as agents of flood control (1920s - 1970s) Floyd Dominy, differences in patterns of flow and change

7, rivers as text ? (1860's to now) Twain, Hemingway, Faulkner, Reisner,

8, rivers as (1970s - present) material nature split into sources, storage and sinks of nutrient exchange, flow and reuse and banks of wild biodiversity

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What is a river but a flood of stories? To live with a river is to understand that sooner or later a flood develops and the course of the stream changes according the the mass of the water moving over ana area against the friction of the streambed and the opposition of the relative sizes of different materials that the flow has been able to dislodge from upstream and carry downstream with sufficient force.

Evolution or development of a river from youth to maturity implies a geologically significant life span in which watersheds give birth to rivers, the rivers scour a deep bed moving silt and debris, as the river shapes the drainage patterns of the river basin and their adjacent valley floors.

Diagram of a cross section of a watershed contrasted with the Lake Tahoe basin in winter, [JVS, 2003]

The context of the way we use words, phrases and terms is critical to determining the meaning of what we are saying. Watershed is a critically important concept. That is because it embodies the entire topography and underground geology through which water permeates and reinvigorates the terrain we settle, use, or leave alone as refuges.

rice in japan Culture and Biology

When using words such as forest, river, or swampland we ought to be aware of the ecological community, by using very precise language. Even as these rice fields suggest, without swampy lowlands, the production of rice –that feeds roughly half the world's people– could never have been developed nor sustained.

Often, our words do not portray nor do they convey the evidence for the salient and defining features of a system; an ecosystem nourished by a river has special, functionally needed attributes that words can easily obscure. The words we use will become fused in our imaginations with the very conditions we describe. And if we are not careful, some people will confuse our descriptions with the reality of rivers that run through us, they trickle even through the grains we digest, and filtrate into the lives of all creatures in or far from the reaches of these riparian regions.

Lesson: In the development of our language one may discern evidence that reveals the persisting importance of rivers, forests and wealth to the endurance of civilizations.

Meaning that:

Forests are sources of rivers because as vegetative landscapes they give rise to springs.

Weald is the English word for forested area.

Forests and streams differ for many reasons some physical, others biological and some acquired by the ecological and evolutionary contingencies that they are subject to over the course of the life of the watershed.

Inherited	Acquired
biological	learned
instinct	practiced

Animals living in estuaries, the river mouth or along the river inherit and acquire adaptive means of adjusting to the flow of conditions.

Riparian tidal shoreline in cross section, is where water flows in opposite directions:

As the river floods or the tide rises the vegetational response to periodic inundation or flooding indicates to what extent and for how long the submerged land remains water logged, limiting the kinds of plants along the shore.

Characteristic plants indicate a riparian zone along the edge of any stream, creek or river. The cross section of this tidally affected creek shows how regular flooding selects for grasses that can tolerate prolonged submergence, although along some rivers shrubs and riparian forests grow.

Estuary, is the name for the mouth of a river where the tidal shoreline is most evident because water flows in two directions each day rising on the flood and falling on the ebb tide.

The Amazon river forests stand submerged for up to five or six months in thirty feet of water because the annual flood of the river fed by the snow of the Andes Mountains, the longest chain of mountains on earth, is considerable and prolonged.

At the headwaters of the Amazon in the east-side of the Andes the silt, mud and rocks eroded form the steep riparian cliffs is evident in the deposition here beside the current.

How rivers are used