Rivers of Living Water

Living Water, Unseen Impact

By Sandy Mayle

The Allegheny River ran through my childhood.

What I didn’t know as I splashed in it, camped beside it, and kayaked on it was that the Allegheny starts as just a small spring in a farmer’s field in northern Pennsylvania. The trickle widens until people are baptized in the flow, fishermen pull Muskie from the depths, and speedboats skim the surface while loaded barges inch along.

In Pittsburgh, the Allegheny joins the Monongahela River to form the Ohio, surging southeast to merge with the Mississippi River and empty into the Gulf of Mexico. In the process, the mighty Mississippi grows to some 11 miles wide while hosting at least 260 species of fish. Its watershed covers over a million square miles, reaching people from the Appalachians to the Rockies and even a bit of Canada.

I wonder… does that farmer’s field in northern Pennsylvania have any idea what is happening downstream?