Arborescent Rivers, Within and Without

 

Today's blue sky belies the gloomy opening to yesterday's post.  

My trip up Barnard Brook, and the description of the Ottauquechee-Black Watershed in the book cited earlier, got me thinking about river patterns.  They are sometimes described as dendritic, meaning "of a branching form; arborescent." The latter word means "treelike in size and form." The tributaries of a river flow into the "main stem" of the watershed like branches attached to a tree.  The main stem of the Ottauquechee grows for about 31 miles, the Connecticut for 407.

This dendritic form seems woven into creation, as it can be found in crystals and in leaves.  It also describes much of what makes the human body live and breathe.  Blood vessels and nerves follow these arborescent paths. We are each a kind of self-contained watershed, with living rivers of fluid and branching electrical impulses.  

Ralph Brown, a British sculptor, created a bust suggesting this identity of human with river.  It is called The River.