On the wall above my writing desk, here in the limestone hills of southern Indiana, I keep a list of the streams that rain and snowmelt follow on their way from our yard to the Gulf of Mexico. The list begins with Jackson Creek, continues through Clear Creek and Salt Creek, the White River, the Wabash, and on to the Ohio and the Mississippi. Along that path, our water travels well over a thousand miles but descends only about 800 feet, a few inches per mile, which makes for slow and deliberate movement, like much else that happens in the heartland. You can appreciate that it takes mighty subtle water, with an unerring feel for gravity, to detect so slight a tilt. This is not to say that streams in mountainous country are any less subtle, only that they have less trouble knowing which way is downhill.

Some folks think of our Midwestern streams as meandering, but I think of them as serene. Instead of rushing pell-mell, they sashay along, savoring the journey. Although the big ones carry hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of water per second, they don’t boast, don’t indulge in frothy rapids, don’t leap over falls to put on a show for the cameras. They don’t provide the sort of whirlpools that give rafters a thrill, but they do curl back on themselves now and again, as if pondering, and they’re quite willing to cut off oxbows when they’ve found a new path. If you ride these contemplative rivers in a canoe, instead of worrying about rocks or waves you can study the shores or the play of light. You can let a dragonfly land on your paddle. You can trail your finger in the current to be nibbled by a fish. You can realize that the whole universe is flowing, our bodies and breath along with mountains and galaxies. Although quiet much of the time, these brawny rivers flood every once in a while, shrugging free of levees, bursting dams, spreading over bottomlands, reminding us we’re not so powerful as we like to believe.
I keep the list of streams on view to remind me of my true address, which is not the one claimed by the post office or the census bureau, but the one defined by flowing water, bedrock, soils, climate, and the plants and animals that flourish here. Maps show the Ohio River dividing Indiana from Kentucky, and the Wabash dividing Indiana from Illinois. But rivers don’t divide the land; they gather it. They carry seeds to new destinations, replenishing forests and prairies. They offer refuge for beaver and fish, flyways for birds, and avenues for humans. Unlike humans bent on protecting their money or power, rivers do not lie. They tell the truth about how we’re living, because everything we dump on the ground or spew into the air, everything that leaks from our factories and homes, eventually winds up in a river. They give us an honest accounting of the land’s health, and therefore of our own.