From Here to Where?

I remember reading some years ago of the lament of a Mississippi riverboat pilot having to travel a mile or more around the meandering loops of the river to arrive at a point less than 100 yards from where the meander began. Such is life on a the wandering waters of the Mississippi and similar rivers.

However, nature is never satisfied to leave things as they were and rivers continually resculpt their contours creating such bends and eventually cutting them off to produce “oxbow lakes,” like Tunica Lake seen in the center of the photo. Many other meandering scars and oxbows can be seen in this photo which was taken near Tunica, Mississippi.

Such meanders have created some interesting squabbles over ownership. For instance, if the boarder between Arkansas and Mississippi follows the course of the river, does the boundary change as the river changes course? A close up of Google Maps shows the boundary curving through the middle of Tunica Lake, even though now, it is cut off from the main flow of the river.

I have also read of multigenerational feuds over who owned an island in the river that over the course of the dispute migrated more than a mile downstream of its location when the original ownership issue first arose. This begs the question: Given the endurance of the earth and our own limited longevity, do we really own the land or are we just its temporary stewards?

#mississippiriver #oxbow #oxbowlake