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June 21, 2001 This morning we went on a guided walk to the headwaters of the Mississippi River. Here are some factoids: The Mississippi is 2552 river miles long from the headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico. Only the Nile and Amazon rivers are longer. If you consider facts other than length, technically the Mississippi River should be considered to be a tributary of the Missouri River! The river starts here at 1452 feet above sea level. If a raindrop fell here at the headwaters it would take 90 days for it to end up in the Gulf of Mexico (as long as it didn’t evaporate first). And that tiny little raindrop would first flow NORTH out of Lake Itasca! Not South! The line from the headwaters of the Mississippi River north to the Lake of the Woods was used as the boundary of the Old Northwest Territory (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the part of Minnesota which is east of the river). The rest of Minnesota became part of the United States when the Louisiana Purchase was acquired. The headwaters were charted and named by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft on July 13, 1832. Pretty amazing when you consider that the search for the source started in 1541 when the Spanish Conquistadors discovered the mouth of the Mississippi! Itasca State Park was established in 1891 with help from the Ojibwe Indians. If you say Ojibwe with a heavy accent on the JIB then you will hear the white man’s name for this Indian tribe: the Chippewa! The name “Itasca” comes from the Latin phrase “Veritas caput” meaning “true head”. And “Mississippi” is a Native American word for “river spread over a large area”. The mouth of the North Arm of Lake Itasca is considered the headwaters even though there are streams that empty into the lake. Our guide told us that none of those streams are big enough to be considered a “true river”, so their endpoints cannot be considered to be the headwaters. It was a bit difficult to understand, but we think there must have been a lot of politics driving the decision to designate this spot (rather than any of the others) as the headwaters. The river flows year round, even when the surface is frozen. At the headwaters it is about 30 feet across and the thing to do is to take off your shoes and “wade across the Mississippi”! Neither of us felt like we needed to do that. We took a few pictures instead! Later that afternoon, Scott went grocery shopping with Kevin. The nearest grocery store is about 20 miles south of here. Lise, quite hoarse and suffering with a sore throat, rested first and fixed her lusciously loaded pasta salad for the potluck/cookout tonight. What a feast! Brats, hotdogs, chicken breasts, and pork tenderloins were cooked over an open fire with Ed Emerick’s cool pivoting grill. Kevin Allen made his famous Bonfire Baked Beans. There was sauerkraut, ambrosia fruit salad (minus the coconut, thank you Sandy Emerick!), brownies, and pineapple upside down cake made by Mary Ann Chellman. We were all way too stuffed for our own good! Definitely happy campers!! As we sat around the fire after the cookout, we heard the loons out on the Lake. Definitely a good day! --Scott & Lise Scheuermann S.L.SCHEUERMANN@WORLDNET.ATT.NET |