#River II August 21

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In 2020 some Coach4aday posts will feature lessons learned by completing, planning, and experiencing 30 day challenges. The challenges include physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional.

River II

I have written about RIVERS before. I have mentioned how the Lumber River even though it is just 133 miles long can do a lot of damage when it spills its banks. I am calling this post RIVER II

If you are like me you probably had no idea that the U.S. has some 250,000 rivers. That is a lot of water in fact the rivers cover some 3.5 million miles.

The ten longest rivers out of the list include names you might recognize like the Missouri, Mississippi, Colorado, Rio Grande, and Ohio River. One top ten RIVERS I didn’t recognize was the Yukon. It borders both Canada and the US. The longest RIVER is the Missouri it measures 2,341 miles some 140 miles longer than the Mississippi.

RIVERS are like each of us in that no two are exactly the same but they do share a lot of commonalities.

Each RIVER has a beginning which is called headwaters and each RIVER has an end called the mouth. Each of us has a beginning and an end. We are all headed to the same place in the end.

Rivers have flow. Our lives also have flow impacted by many factors. The two factors that impact a river’s flow is volume and is it contained or free flowing. When we ponder that last point about being restrained it is amazing how a RIVER that is contained and free flowing take on different looks.

• Volume-How much water is in the RIVER-does it get enough water from it’s headwaters and tributaries to flow all year long.? Some RIVERS go thru cycles where they are raging to a slow moving trickle this can be based on snow melt. I think many of can relate to this analogy. Sometimes we go thru these same cycles of flow in the same day.
• Is the RIVER confined and contained or allow to run free? When a RIVER’S flow is stopped or slowed by external factors (like a dam) it impacts it. As humans we often have external factors take away our natural flow also.

If a river is large, there’s a good chance that much of its water comes from tributaries. How do geographers decide which river is the “main” river and which is the “tributary” when they’re naming rivers? Usually the bigger river gets to be the “main” river, but sometimes history or other factors come into play. I think many successful people forget  the importance of the tributaries in their career or life.

It is a great reminder that accomplishments and awards are similar to a large RIVER being fed by many tributaries. We don’t achieve greatness without others contributing to our achievements. We should not forget that the mighty Mississippi has over 7,000 RIVERS feed into it.

There are also hundreds of songs with the word RIVER in its title. Here is a list of the 50 best according to ranker.com

Those songs and their lyrics often give us some things to ponder.

The River of Dreams-Billy Joel

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
From the mountains of faith
To a river so deep

I must be looking for something
Something sacred I lost
But the river is wide
And it’s too hard to cross

And even though I know the river is wide
I walk down every evening and I stand on the shore
And try to cross to the opposite side
So I can finally find out what I’ve been looking for

Hungry Heart-Bruce Springsteen

Like a river that don’t know where it’s flowing
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going

Tags: Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Contained, Flow, Free, Headwater, Hungry Heart, Long Rivers, Lumber River, Mississippi River, Missouri River, Mouth, River, River Songs, the River of Dreams, Tributaries, Yukon River