We live in the birthplace of headwaters. The creek that runs by my house joins the Tuckasegee river, which flows to the little Tennessee and thus to the Tennessee, Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. Just a few miles away is the headwaters of the Chatooga, which flows to the Savannah and the Atlantic Ocean. Likewise the headwaters of the Pigeon, which joins the mighty French Broad River; and likewise the French Broad itself, which originates in forks within a few miles of my home.
To love a land is to know its rivers, their origin, course, and rifts. You’ll know a man who loves his country when you meet one who can tell you how its rivers flow.
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We, too, live near a subcontinental divide which sits about 7 miles west of the City of Milwaukee. Water falling west of that divide flows to the Mississippi; those to the east flow to Lake Michigan.
I learned the importance of rivers growing up in Georgia, where the physical location of cities was usually determined by a river. There might be a port at or near the mouth, a portage city at the rifts (Atlanta was originally one of these, which is why the railroads all terminated there, giving it the original name of "Terminus"), towns built to service mule train roads at the headwaters (like Gainesville, originally "Mule Camp Springs").
Here it's even more evident because of the the several different river courses occasioned by the ridges and the continental divide. The French Broad forms the Tennessee when it has its confluence with the Holston; but the Tuckasegee doesn't join it until the Little Tennessee links up. Rain that falls on one side of the ridge goes one way, on the other another. All that water eventually ends up in the same place but it winds a long way before it comes back together.
How do the rivers flow? Intermittently, now. I live in a place where people get excited about there being water in the river. :)
LittleRed1
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