The Story of a River

A broad auburn leaf from a maple tree shuddered in the chilly northern wind. The breeze let up and the leaf came to rest for a moment. But the minute of peace quickly passed and a sudden gust forced the leaf to let go of the branch. Tumbling and spinning, the leaf drifted down into the moving water below.

Slow-moving and muddy brown, the river looked like a ribbon of chocolate milk. The Mississippi is cold and wide here, and close to a hundred feet deep. Here, the river looks very different from its Minnesota beginnings where it starts as a small clear stream.

Hung up in a small whirlpool, the maple leaf spun in tight circles before breaking free of the current and drifting near the middle of the river. Continuing south, the leaf lazily drifted by rocky cliffs that stand above the sides of the churning water. Some of these cliffs were formed two million years ago at the Mississippi's birth. For thousands of years, melting ice from glaciers poured into the young river and formed its course through the heart of North America.

A shiny otter bumped the maple leaf with her tail before diving down against the current in search of a meal. On the east bank, a raccoon dipped his tongue in the water for a quick drink. Further down, a sleepy opossum lumbered away from the water's edge stepping carelessly over an arrowhead. The sharpened arrow point could have been made be a Kickapoo, Natchez or Choctaw. Many Native American tribes made their homes along the banks of the Mississippi.

Bouncing along the large smooth rocks that line the river's banks, the maple leaf paused, safe from the violence of the suddenly swift water. The surge in current was caused by the blending of one more river into its dusky water. The St. Croix, the Des Moines, the Missouri and the Ohio, all find their way to the winding waters of the Mississippi.

Heavy with water, the leaf began to move slower. It drifted around the bend where Europeans first laid their eyes on the river. In 1541, the Spanish explorer, Henando de Soto crossed river on his search for the Seven Cities of Gold. De Soto's quest continued for months after he first set foot on the Mississippi's banks. He never found the Seven Cities, but he never forgot the big river. Just beneath the surface, a large catfish stirred and dove to the bottom, unaware of the importance of this historic site.

Nudged by the ripples from a barge's crest, the waterlogged leaf made its way back toward the shore. This one is carrying coal to Baton Rouge, but it could have been full of corn or wheat or any of hundreds of things that glide up and down the river's spine. The river today sees a great deal of traffic, but that wasn't always true. Before 1803, lonely canoes of Chickasaw hunting parties or French fur trappers were the river's only human passengers. After the Louisiana Purchase, growing numbers of flatboats, keelboats and rafts manned by settlers and traders skimmed atop its thick water.

Thirty years later, stern wheel paddleboats dressed up like wedding cakes slapped their way up and down the river. The grand paddle wheelers moved cotton, people and the imaginations of men like Samuel Clemens. In his day, the town wharf was the center of action. Boats lined up at all hours to load and unload their human cargo of swindlers, slave dealers, gamblers and assorted other river travelers. Clemens answered the river's call and learned to pilot the great riverboats himself. Long before he thought to write about life along its banks, Clemens studied the river with a captain's eye from the pilothouse. He even took his pen name, Mark Twain, from a term used to measure the water's depth.

The paddle wheelers are gone now, and just like the characters in Twain's stories, they live only in our imaginations. Today, the river is dominated by freight barges, shoved up and down by river tugs. Long, flat trains of boats like the one that pushed the maple leaf to the shore. Caught in the soft silt of the riverbank, the maple leaf's journey has ended. It will not continue and follow the river into the sprawling flatlands of the delta or bustling action of the port of New Orleans. It will never taste the salty waves of the Gulf of Mexico. The maple leaf, now part of an earthen levee, has taken its place in the river's history.

The sun started its dive in a blaze of orange and red to close another day on the river. Tomorrow, the sun will climb the other side of the sky in the morning, and the river will again be busy with animals, fish, people, boats and maple leaves. Just as it will the next day and just as it has for countless years before.