Harold Fisk’s Meander Maps of the Mississippi River (1944) (opens in new tab)

There is a bridge in the sculpture garden of the New Orleans Museum of Art that has you walking over the lagoon on about a dozen historical paths of the Mississippi, stretched somewhat straight.

The photo on their site really does not do it justice: https://noma.org/collection/mississippi-meanders/

Walking along it and thinking about how we've tried to keep it in place for the past few hundred years, and the ephemerality of human affairs, is an interesting experience. Especially if you live along its course.

There's something sad to me about how rivers, especially in cities, have been changed to a set course, with reinforced banks. I know there are massive benefits, and "natural" rivers with changing banks cause plenty of problems, but it makes them feel overly manmade, as if we just dug a canal where a river used to be.

It wasn't until I read The Histories by Herodotus that I realized the English word "meander" is based on the name of a river [0] in modern-day Turkey which was well known for its tortuous path. I had a similar realization when reading The Odyssey and I came across the character Mentor [1].

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meander#Origin_of_term

1: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mentor#Etymology

"The Mississippi is well worth reading about. It is not a commonplace river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable. Considering the Missouri its main branch, it is the longest river in the world--four thousand three hundred miles. It seems safe to say that it is also the crookedest river in the world, since in one part of its journey it uses up one thousand three hundred miles to cover the same ground that the crow would fly over in six hundred and seventy-five."

-- Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

Very cool! While the colors serve an obvious purpose, I initially viewed the page in grayscale and I think the maps are even more beautiful that way.

Really is a work of art, as are many maps.