With towering bald cypress trees and long stretches of calm water, the Frio River in Concan, Texas, provides public waters for visitors looking to go tubing. Sitting next to Garner State Park, which provides ample recreational activities like hunting, fishing, and hiking, the Frio River has created my best summer memories. I have enjoyed countless summers burning my skin under the hot southern sun. Tradition calls my family to Frio County each summer, along with hundreds more families looking to escape their daily lives. Driving in, cell phone reception dies and people get the chance to look up and see the wondrous nature provided by the Texas Hill Country. My first view of the river makes me breathless. Shallow water washes over the road’s cement pavement. Men, women, and kids break the river’s flow; some sit in fold-up chairs and read a book, but most …show more content…
My family tube three different routes starting at crossings called Seven Bluff, Frio Country (the first crossing), and Comanche crossing. We like to begin at Comanche crossing first; the float remains shorter than the other two, but the rapids provide both fast and slow waters. White rocks lay scattered around the cypress trees and the river bank; the rocks continue into the water to create shallow currents. Some people pile the rocks in specific places to create rapids or pathways, and other are large, which makes walking a struggle. In the water, the rocks are slick with river moss. I slipped many times on those rocks. Age does not fix the problem either, it only makes it worse and more awkward. My dad used to carry my tube so I could focus on walking. The first time I had to double task was at thirteen. I wore the tube like tutu around my waist. Worst idea ever. I couldn’t see the water below me and slipped on the rocks. You learn quickly that water shoes are a necessity. They are ugly and a complete turn-off, but they protect my feet from the grimy
As I looked out the window of the restaurant, I could see the sun bouncing off the sparkling water below. Boats and other water craft scatter the water as well as people on water-skis and inner tubes. The picturesque view makes life seem so much better and just looking at the river makes a person calmer. The scene just described is the view from the window of a restaurant called Sophia in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the corresponding river is the mighty Mississippi. Although Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, this scene could be found right here in the valley of Phoenix. The way this is possible is through the Rio Salado Project.
Contemporary writer, John M Barry, in his passage from Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, seeks to communicate the extraordinarily perplexing river that has a life of it’s own. Barry illustrates the incomprehensibility and lifelikeness of the Mississippi, and how that makes it so alluring, by establishing it as far superior to all other rivers.
Author and historian, Carol Sheriff, completed the award winning book The Artificial River, which chronicles the construction of the Erie Canal from 1817 to 1862, in 1996. In this book, Sheriff writes in a manner that makes the events, changes, and feelings surrounding the Erie Canal’s construction accessible to the general public. Terms she uses within the work are fully explained, and much of her content is first hand information gathered from ordinary people who lived near the Canal. This book covers a range of issues including reform, religious and workers’ rights, the environment, and the market revolution. Sheriff’s primary aim in this piece is to illustrate how the construction of the Erie Canal affected the peoples’ views on these issues.
In a passage from his book, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, author John M. Barry makes an attempt use different rhetorical techniques to transmit his purpose. While to most, the Mississippi River is only some brown water in the middle of the state of Mississippi, to author John M. Barry, the lower Mississippi is an extremely complex and turbulent river. John M. Barry builds his ethos, uses elevated diction, several forms of figurative language, and different styles of syntax and sentence structure to communicate his fascination with the Mississippi River to a possible audience of students, teachers, and scientists.
"Eventually the watcher joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river." The river that Norman Maclean speaks of in A River Runs Through It works as a connection, a tie, holding together the relationships between Norman and his acquaintances in this remote society. Though "It" is never outwardly defined in the novella there is definite evidence "It" is the personality of the people and that the river is running through each individual personality acting as the simple thread connecting this diverse group of people.
The Massacre River was, in fact, Danticat’s inspiration to write the book (Wachtel 108). She sees the river as “both sad and comforting” in Hispaniola’s history (Wechtel 107). The river is both a site of grief and a site of hope. Although so many people have died in the river, Haitians still use it to “cleanse their labor’s residue off their bodies, reconnect with their community, and pay homage to their dead” (Shemak 96). Danticat also sees the river as dividing between torment and hope (Bell xi). This idea of water being both divisive and comforting is prominent throughout the novel.
In the chapter the “Rainy River” of the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, O’Brien conveys a deep moral conflict between fleeing the war to go to Canada versus staying and fighting in a war that he does not support. O’Brien is an educated man, a full time law student at Harvard and a liberal person who sees war as a pointless activity for dimwitted, war hungry men. His status makes him naive to the fact that he will be drafted into the war and thus when he receives his draft notice, he is shocked. Furthermore, his anti-war sentiments are thoroughly projected, and he unravels into a moral dilemma between finding freedom in Canada or standing his ground and fighting. An image of a rainy river marking the border between Minnesota and Canada is representative of this chapter because it reflects O’Brien’s moral division between finding freedom in Canada or standing his ground and fighting in the Vietnam war.
Eiseley, Loren “The Flow of the River” from Fifty Great Essays 2nd ed. 2002 Penguin Academics New York.
Schmidt, Jan Zlotnik, and Lynne Crockett. "Flood ." Portable legacies: fiction, poetry, drama, nonfiction. 4th ed. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. 92-99. Print.
To some this story might seem like a tragedy, but to Christians this is a beautiful story. Although young Harry dies at the end, he is accepted into the kingdom of God, which is far superior to anything on Earth. A non-religious family raises him and the first taste of Christianity he gets makes him want to pursue God. In Flannery O’Conner’s short story, The River, the allure of Gods grace and the repelling of sinful ways are shown heavily through Harry.
The sense of community and safety was undermined by the flood and affected the way the survivors viewed their surrounding environment. The survivors were afraid of a similar event happening again and tearing down their recovering community. This event reflects the savage and untamed characteristic of nature in our lives. Although the Pittston Company tried to keep massive amounts of water from flooding the valleys below, they could not prevent the rain from falling that eventually caused the flood. As humans, we try as hard as we can to tame nature and bend it to our will but nature will always win in the
The Mississippi River is one of the world 's extraordinary rivers. It is the longest in the United States, more than twenty-three hundred miles in length, as it structures the outskirts of ten states, just about bisecting the mainland (Currie,2003, 8). This waterway has a long history also, and it has touched the lives of numerous individuals. The Mississippi is said to start at Lake Itasca in Minnesota. In 1832, pilgrim Henry Schoolcraft named this lake, not after any neighborhood Indian name, but rather from the Latin words for "genuine head" which are veritas caput abbreviated to "Itasca" (Currie, 2003, 4). In any case, much sooner than its source was named it was a navigational waterway. The Indians who initially lived on the banks of the stream were known as the Mississippians. From 800 to 1500, these people groups utilized the waterway for exchange. They dug out
Rodriguez,Richard. “The Fear of Losing a Culture.” in Writing on the River.2nd ed. By English Faculty and Staff of Chattanooga State Community College. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2009. 129-131.Print.
The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line - that was the woods on t'other side; you couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and warn't black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far away-trading-scows, and such things; and long black streaks-rafts ... and by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up.
In “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, the river stands as a symbol of endlessness, geographical awareness, and the epitome of the human soul. Hughes uses the literary elements of repetition and simile to paint the river as a symbol of timelessness. This is evident in the first two lines of the poem. Hughes introduces this timeless symbol, stating, “I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins” (Hughes 1-2). These opening lines of the poem identifies that the rivers Hughes is speaking about are older than the existence of human life. This indicates the rivers’ qualities of knowledge, permanence, and the ability to endure all. Humans associate “age” with these traits and the longevity of a river makes it a force to be reckoned with. The use of a simile in the line of the poem is to prompt the audience that this is truly a contrast between that ancient wisdom, strength, and determination of the river and the same qualities that characterize a human being. The imagery portrayed in the poem of blood flowing through human veins like a river flows ...