Two posts ago, I traced my trip from NYC to Woodstock through the watersheds along the way. Until I began this online journal, I had not given much thought to these natural features.
Without knowing a watershed, one cannot understand the river, and it turns out you can't understand a lot of other things as well. John Wesley Powell defined a watershed this way, "that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living
things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where,
as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a
community."
Powell claims watersheds form human communities. Just as the river carves the path for the road, so the watershed shapes the way we live together. Nations, states, provinces and municipalities owe their patterns to the watersheds they occupy. Not a one-to-one dependence to be sure, yet a fundamental relationship. The EPA will tell you (http://water.epa.gov/type/watersheds/whatis.cfm) there are 2110 watersheds in the continental United States. Some in Vermont ignore state and international borders. Social relations in those places often defer to the "simple logic" of the river world over the political divides.
The Associated Press disseminated the following article in January, 1988.
CALAIS,
Me. — Gunpowder was at a premium during the War of 1812, and none was
available when residents of this small border city wanted to add a
traditional bang to their Fourth of July celebration.
No problem. They simply borrowed some from their neighbors across the St. Croix River in St. Stephen, New Brunswick. (Emphasis mine.)
So what if Canada and its mother country, Great Britain, were at war with the United States at the time? That was hardly sufficient cause for St. Stephen to refuse its neighbor.
"It's always been that way," says Bill Francis, who lives in his native St. Stephen but operates a gift and wood-products shop on the U.S. side. "There's a strong national identity, but people try to make it a community."
"I facetiously comment that we get along better than we would if we were in the same country," says Calais City Manager Nancy Orr.
(http://articles.latimes.com/1988-01-24/news/mn-37929_1_new-brunswick-border-new-pool)
No problem. They simply borrowed some from their neighbors across the St. Croix River in St. Stephen, New Brunswick. (Emphasis mine.)
So what if Canada and its mother country, Great Britain, were at war with the United States at the time? That was hardly sufficient cause for St. Stephen to refuse its neighbor.
"It's always been that way," says Bill Francis, who lives in his native St. Stephen but operates a gift and wood-products shop on the U.S. side. "There's a strong national identity, but people try to make it a community."
"I facetiously comment that we get along better than we would if we were in the same country," says Calais City Manager Nancy Orr.
(http://articles.latimes.com/1988-01-24/news/mn-37929_1_new-brunswick-border-new-pool)
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