Friday, August 03, 2007

BIG Bodies of Water

It's strange having grown up on the East Coast. You believe you know what it's like to live near a large body of water. It's the Atlantic Ocean for god's sake. It's huge! The gravitational force of another planet actually controls it's tides, huge.

You actually believe that living near this body of water is a vital part of your existence. You can't imagine not living on a coast. It's like the distance from the great tides somehow affects you.

You live with a constant calculation of distance to the water. Under two hours is acceptable. Anything more, questionable.

But it's not like you're planning an escape. Like there's a submarine off shore.

It's just a strange superstition you developed because you grew up in a county with a coast.

And well, the West Coast, it just completely messes with your sense of direction. The water shouldn't be to the West. When you're traveling North the water should be to the right, South to the left, otherwise you're just lost.

Lost.

Then somehow you wind up in the center of the country. No oceans.

That's when you meet the big bodies of water of American myth and legend ~ the Great Mississippi, the Mighty Colorado - true waterways, unlike the Connecticut or the James. While the other water powers hurricanes and Nor'easters, these are of the waters of floods and droughts. They bisect the country, the continental divide. Other rivers run East and West of them, literally.

But it's not until they swallow people up that you remember how mighty they actually are. Somehow the fact they you don't need a 747 to cross them diminishes their danger. Don't be fooled.

We thought we could tame them. With damns and canals and such. Silly us. We are the Sigfried and Roy to the river's Bengal tiger; it plays along when it feels like it, but when push comes to shove, it will go for the jugular every time.

I lived here for over a year before realizing that Lake Travis, Town Lake were all the Colorado River. I mean, I knew they weren't actual lakes, I just didn't know it was the Colorado.

I cross that river every day. Twice in fact. Until the bridge in Minnesota collapsed, it didn't even occur to me how amazing that is.

So how does my former self survive thoousands of miles from the Atlantic? I go back and stick my feet in every year. But I don't think it matters so much when you really don't like the beach.

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