The Guy Downstream

The first man to look on the great river may well have stood high on a hill and surveyed the valley. He might have seen an obstacle to his trek. Or he might have recognized a home. Regardless, I think he must have looked with wonder at the woven threads of channels and sandy islands lined with willow breaks teaming with prey. For he was above all else a hunter.

This man must have looked with favor on this chance to feed his people. That is how I think he would have seen the river. As an opportunity. For the game on its banks and the fish in its waters would allow him to bear his responsibilities to his own.

Whether he crossed the river and continued to wander or whether he settled on its banks we cannot know. But either he or his descendants colonized the valley and did make it a home. For hundreds of generations these people hunted and later farmed the land around the river.

And it had cost no one anything but their labor.

Then our own forefathers, Europeans and descendants of Europeans, like that first hunter ‘discovered’ the Missouri River for themselves. They first saw it not as a home but a path. To new lands. To trade and only later to colonies of their own.

At first the trade was sufficient. But soon moving the native peoples away was a priority. To take the river and to exploit this path to the west. Then to settle and harvest the timber to feed the steamboats and later the trains that became the chosen tool of expansion. For hundreds of miles the valley was taken and cleared and then farmed by our fathers.

And it cost little. Only the Indians had to pay. With their culture, their land and their lives.

That is the legacy of our fathers.

Now settled, the river valley feeds a large part of the country. Even the world. But at a cost as yet unknown. Levees hem it in and protect the fields as the now channeled river carries away our waste.

Our sewage is dumped in the water at one town only to be taken up and filtered out for the drinking water of the next. Nitrates and phosphates and pesticides are carried to the sea. And areas the size of states are laid waste in the oceans by our practices here in the valley.

Refuse and plastics and all manner of trash is deposited, always downstream. It’s always the next guys problem. And that is correct. Except the next guy is your son. Or daughter. Or grandchild.

For that is who lives downstream.

It will cost nothing. Not to us anyway. Only our children will pay.

The legacy we are leaving is as ugly as the one we inherited. We have changed but not learned.

Will the largess of the valley still feed the gulf fishermen when their livelihood is gone? Or will our practices render the river itself one day useless. Choked by our refuse, polluted by our hand and clogged by our greed.

The valley encompasses more than 529,000 square miles. None of it untouched, none of it exempt.

It is a barometer of our world. It shows more clearly than anything else which way we are headed.

That first man looked on the river as an opportunity, It is still an opportunity. But is it one we will save?