Saturday, January 2, 2016

Water Power

            
Ouachita River at Camden- Margaret Horne
See and hear it at Mammoth Spring. Stand amazed at what the harnessed flow once provided. Compare it, fleetingly, to Lake Mead and Hoover Dam, the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. Recall how the Ouachita River often takes Highway 7 from Arkadelphia to Camden. Reflect on the devastating 2011 flooding at Memphis and the number of locks put in place as the Old Man visited Beale Street and Riverside Drive. Remember how rivers hunger for land. The Black River, the Current River, the White River, and the St. Francis River gorged themselves with northeast Arkansas farmland.
Thing is, beyond what man can do to delay the inevitable, the water will come. From the Mighty Mississippi’s enormous drainage area, it will drive steadily south. Whether man builds anything to stem the flow or not, the muddy menace will plow through, gaining depth and strength, power and speed. Man is reduced to a watchman as he recognizes the inevitable: water will have its way.
Ouachita River - Old Bridge at Camden and Hwy 7
Growing up in the Queen Cityon the Ouachita River, attending college at Henderson in Arkadelphia where we sunbathed and sometimes fogged up car windows along the Ouachita’s banks, spending my professional life in the city where the Delta begins, and retiring near the St. Francis tributary, river water speaks a language I understand. Perhaps that is why reading The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America touched me, carved a permanent inlet.

Crystal Bridges Art Museum -Flood of 1927

Politics, power, and pride made decisions in 1927. Lessons were learned. Still...
People build in flood plains; prognosticators forecast crest dates and depths, and newspapers feature stories about levee systems

People figure the odds and take the risk.
People lose, though, when standing against a rising river's trek to the sea.

1 comment:

  1. I'm especially moved by this post because for the second time since we've lived on the ridge above the Arkansas River, its mighty waters have inundated the homes along its banks below. As you said, "People figure the odds and take a risk." I feel so sorry for them; yet, they knew it could happen. (I think you should send this to AR DEM-GAZ. )

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