My brother, yesterday; “Hey take a pic of the Mississippi and text it to me.”
Me; “…okay. Why?”
Bro; “Because the people down here (Albuquerque) keep going on about the dinky little streams they call the Rio Grande and won’t believe me that the Mississippi by us is a mile across.”
Me; “…I thought the Rio Grande was a big river?”
Bro; “Look it up.”
Me; (quick googles Rio Grande by Albuquerque)
It;
Me; “HA ok I’m on it.”
Me, dropping by the boat ramp today;
THATS a proper river, New Mexico.
The dim blue land waaaaaay on the other side past the little island is Illinois, by the way.
To be fair, the Mississippi is the Spiders Georg of rivers.
Fair. It eats six or seven tributaries the size of the Rio Grande just from our county and doesn’t even notice.
Not counting the Wapsi and the Maquoketa river, both of which are easily bigger than the Rio Grande, and barely noticeably swell the Mississippi when they join it.
The Mississippi is a mile across from shore to shore by my house and between fifteen to twenty feet deep on average, and up to thirty feet deep in certain spots. There are catfish in there bigger than I am.
Elk river, just below my house, is nearly the size of the Rio Grande and barely rates a mention on maps around here.
Sorry southwestern USA, but your river game is Weak.
I grew up on the banks of that river, in Vicksburg, Mississippi. The River is nothing less than a living god. It’s a mile across and 10-20 feet deep *normally*. Every spring it swells up, overflows its banks, and eats several towns.
Yep.
Several people drown in there just in my area every year. Even people who know it well.
That river is old, and huge, and hungry, and if you disrespect it it will drag you in and kill you in a heartbeat.
Oh yeah I grew up on a waterway connected to the Mississippi (the Tom Bigbee, near Amory Mississippi) and I’ve seen the Mississippi. She’s a big girl.
Try being an earth witch and catching a sense of the spirit of that river.
Whooof.
The people who drown in it every year…and every year, just from our town, there’s three or four of them…well.
You turn your back on a water spirit that huge and ancient at your own risk. I’ll put it that way.
It’s not necessarily malevolent. It’s just…indifferent. It doesn’t give a single fuck about people, save for those who offer it its due respect. It’s fond of those.
But if you don’t, or even if you do but slip up just once…well, then they find your corpse twenty miles downriver six weeks later.
Oh, and I completely forgot to mention: It’s got sharks in it.
There have been reports of bull sharks as far north as St. Louis.
While I’m aware this is obviously a Big Deal among rivers, I genuinely thought most river spirits were that kind of old and cranky, and demanding of respect, no matter their size.
(I kinda feel like only an idiot disrespects their rivers.)
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