I always expected river banks to ease into the water, to slope gradually down toward an actual shore. But that’s not the nature of rivers. Oceans and lakes, and big rivers like the Mississippi, sure - they lap at the sand and the dirt. And their shores or banks are a transition, where their wide and dispersed strength recedes and cedes its influence to the land.
Rivers, these little ones, cut and gash their way through the prairie...hollowing out, leaving jagged edges - tumbling crumbling edges - that wash away, pebble and grain, to pile on each other further downstream. They tell a story, these kind of river banks. The layers of the exposed land are our history.
This layer? This is when the Sioux came here. And this one? This is when they were pushed away and placed on the reservations.
It will always be a confusing story, like so much of our elusive past. As much a testament to the erosive power of time, of eventuality, as it is to the futility of standing up to it.
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