1. Blogging rivers

The River Thames and Barnes Bridge at sunset

I’ve always been intrigued by rivers, and for many years I was not entirely sure why. That mysterious feeling of constant movement to some sort of inevitable destiny must have been part of it. In childhood games of pooh sticks and early books like Wind in the Willows, there was some indefinable aura about the course of rivers.

Now that a lot more water has passed under the proverbial bridge, it is perhaps easier to understand why rivers hold such fascination – and play such an important part in our civilisation – for me and many others. 

Arising from the highest parts of our world, they run inevitably to a conclusion – their dispersion into a vastness of salinity, in the seas that cover the majority of the planet – only to arise again sourced by rain and snow. Somewhere amongst them we find life; romance, history and environmental catastrophes. From earliest civilisation rivers have held symbolic importance due to their provision of life giving forces: water for life and agriculture, fertility and abundance, which imbue them with religious and mystical importance. And what greater symbolism than the River Styx and the transfer of the living to the dead, courtesy of the ferryman Charon? The inundations (annual flooding) of the Nile gave rise to the ancient Egyptian civilisation, and influenced every part of it. The river was viewed by the Egyptians as a god – Hapi, the deity of fertility. Think also of the rivers of Babylon and the role of the Tigris and Euphrates. And yet the Greek philosopher Heraclitus is credited with saying, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man”. So, constancy and centrality, and yet continual change. It’s not possible to ‘own’ a river for these reasons, although you can own a portion of riverbank. Control of rivers is, however, a different thing, and we will see many examples where control brings political or military power.

One person’s interest (mine) in rivers is hardly going to produce great new insights – so why blog about them? Think of it as occupational therapy for an old man, hence the title. It’s pure self indulgence, and if no-one else reads it I will be neither surprised nor offended. Of course there are other – and better blogs about rivers, and many books. I have dabbled with blogs previously*, and as with those, if a few people find them of interest that will be nice. Both previous blogs had rivers as prominent players in history – consider the Marne and the Somme as bywords for the gruesome horror of the Western Front.

As the long wet winter approaches, and shorter days gradually rule out long walks through local heath and woodlands, it’s time to pick up a desk based project on something of interest. What is the scope? Hard to be sure, but if I were to restrict myself to rivers I have seen, crossed or traversed, that would make only a minuscule sample of what’s out there. So I aim for a broader coverage – indeed from one of the world’s longest (5th actually) with one of the longest names, Mississippi-Missouri (3709 miles) to one of the shortest, with surely one of the shortest names, River Og (1.9 miles).

I will sample rivers that I know well, but probably many more that I have not the remotest chance of ever seeing. Some will be because of their topography/ecology; others for religious or symbolic interest, and most of all those with a significant role in history and politics – how many episodes could be devoted, in that regard, just to the Rhine, or the Danube?

Finally, I return to the river as allegory for our life courses.
From the promising arrival via spring or headwater to the finality of the sea, and the falls, meanderings and mainstreams that come somewhere between, rivers make an attractive focus for me, as someone much closer to the estuary that the source. I might stray into autobiography or reflections, but indulge me, in my Old Man’s Rivers.

The River Styx....

* World War 1 – I was there in Spirit (177 posts) tracked the centenary of the Great War of 1914-18; and Vanished Kingdoms of Europe (6 posts) was a smaller project describing kingdoms obliterated by strife and wars