Old Man River

Rivers have always been the life source for people.  Native Americans located their villages along rivers.  Settlers built their cabins along the banks of rivers and creeks.  Towns grew because they had the river for transportation, power to harness, and a water source.  These people choose a river to live next to for practical reasons and not for the beauty of the river.

Today people elect to live on the river for the beauty.  Few of us really use the river for its intended purpose. I often will speak with friends who live on the river and ask them if they boat and fish and their answer is, "We used to but now we just relax here."  Our plates for our cars talk about our 10,000 lakes, so it is natural that people in the state of Minnesota love water and want to live near it.  In fact our taxes tell us we value water.  Properties on or near water are taxed higher as they are seen as a property of value. 

In recent years we have gone to the river and cleaned up the industrial sites that once claimed the shore line and now build condos there.  You see this in St. Paul, Hastings, and many of the towns along the river.  Stillwater has built condos to over-look their river.  It is not considered prime real estate.

This week Minnesota made national news as our river towns sand bag to keep the Red River out of its houses and places of business.  Get this, the Red River is considered a new river compared to history and has not had time to erode out a canyon for itself.  This is one of the reasons this flat part of Minnesota floods as the water does not have high enough banks to contain it. We all hold our breaths and say prayers for these people who live along the banks of the river and hope that the river does not lap over their dikes and levees.

We might ask why people go back and live near the river when it can happen again.  Hope.  They hope it won't happen again.  It has not been like this since 1997.  They had hoped steps had been taken to keep it from happening again.  Never relax when dealing with Mother Nature.  She can be beautiful and she can be cruel.