Rivers are by far the most interesting and beautiful landscapes that this Earth knows.  They are so beautiful that a great number of painters decided to paint them in their works.  Many famous artists such as Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, Thomas Gainsborough, and Bob Ross have painted breathtaking landscapes with rivers in them that rival many of the paintings that are considered their masterpieces.  These painters decided to take this beautiful landscape, and try to replicate its majesty.  The hardest thing to capture in a river is the flowing water, and the reflection given off by the water.  Rivers contain many different parts like rapids, eddie pools, shallows, banks, rough spots, and waterfalls.  Many artists like to also portray these so that they can fully captivate the essence of the river scene.  River paintings are some of my favorite because of the amount of complexity allowed in rivers’ varying shapes and backgrounds.

Rivers flow from the tops of mountains where the snowpack is contained.  The snowpack melts and it makes water that flows down the mountain into rivers.  The highest I’ve been to the top of is Nevada Falls in Yosemite National Park.  Yosemite is a beautiful place with many beautiful sights to see, many of these being different places along the Merced and Little Yosemite rivers.  Snowpack isn’t the only thing that makes rivers flow.  Rain is also a factor in making the rivers of the world keep on flowing.  The rain falls into the already existing river from the snowpack and keeps the river flowing with the addition of new water.  The way rivers form is one of the most interesting natural processes in the world.

Some of the world’s most spectacular rivers are the Amazon River, which doesn’t have a single bridge over it; the Nile River, which was the basis of life in Ancient Egypt; and the Mississippi river that can claim the title of the original western boundary of the United States of America.  Rivers have a large historical significance, as almost all big inland cities have an accessible river going around them.  These rivers acted as trade routes and gave these places trade and prosperity.  Rivers have always been used for many things by civilizations old and new, whether for fishing or for trade rivers will always have their use.

Some of the natural beauty in rivers for me comes in the way that the same water is never in the same place once.  It comes to that spot and it moves on immediately, with not enough time to stay in one spot as it must go on with the rest of the water to the mouth of the river where it feeds into the sea, and might one day be washed back into that river.  The water still wouldn’t stay in one place in the river even though it has come so far.  It doesn’t stop, it just keeps moving for more water to take its place.  Another thing that I find beautiful about rivers is that every single place that water took up one second ago is still taken up by water, but completely different water.  The water is viewed as one unit, but it’s all separate even though it flows together.  Rivers are also beautiful because of how they flow in patterns.  The water flows over the same rocks in the same way that it has for hundreds of years.  Moving one little rock might not change the way the river ends up going, but it does change the way that the water flows in one area, disturbing the way that water has been flowing for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years.

Rivers are not only the most beautiful, but also the most interesting landscapes in the world.  They are constantly active, and there is never one spot that isn’t moving along towards its goal of the sea, where it just moves back and forth instead of the far more interesting option of going in one direction and not taking any detours.  Rivers may not be the most complex of water systems, but they sure are the most interesting.

http://www.americanrivers.org/

http://www.ngrrec.org/