Holding back the Mississippi

Up and down the Mississippi River, towns have girded banks and bolstered levees with sandbags. The rain and storms are like fuel on fire, feeding the monster that has been appropriately labeled The Big River. There is history of this winding, curvy Leviathan swelling up in wrath-like proportions. This summer we are again reminded that the coursing of this vein demonstrates a life in itself.In his ode to the river, “Life on the Mississippi,” Mark Twain regards the personality of this great, fluid beast. He notes that it “is always changing its habitat bodily,” and documents one community’s experience: “At Hard Times, Louisiana, the river is two miles west of the region it used to occupy. As a result, the original site of that settlement is not now in Louisiana at all, but on the other side of the river, in the state of Mississippi.” And this is not just one span of its length. “Nearly the whole of that one thousand three hundred miles of old Mississippi River which La Salle floated down in his canoes, two hundred years ago, is good solid dry ground now. The river lies to the right of it, in places, and to the left of it in other places.”It seems an ironic twist that the very material, which is so susceptible to being washed away, is now the greatest defense of many communities being…well, washed away. Sand bags, while cumbersome and time consuming, seem to be the most trustworthy and available resource to this point. While there are several alternatives probing the market, the sandbag remains to be the icon of flood defense.The character of sand is strangely similar enough to the water that, when contained, it does its job. Sand seals holes because it is fluid. Just like the water that alters its course, sand is willing to be malleable, too.The test seems to be if the human community can adjust as discerningly as the water and earth.We are a lot like the river – and the sand for that matter. Left alone, we are susceptible to wash out emotionally, spiritually, and physically. In community, however, we have purpose and direction. Our limits become our strength. Containers are not for inhibiting, but for channeling. I believe an important reason sandbags are the icon of flood defense is because every able body has power to help. The chief accomplishment of a town’s victory against a rising river is more than a physical victory. It is the moral accomplishment of joining together for a common purpose. Every person is essential. Every granule of sand is significant. Every drop of water has potential.

- Tob Adams