Growing up in Astoria, Oregon, I learned at a very young age just how much importance a river could have to a community. The Columbia was the heart of the town’s entire economy. From fishing and logging to recreation and tourism, nearly everything that happened in Astoria was connected to the river.
“Who hath divided a watercourse for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of thunder; to cause it to rain on the earth, where no man is; on the wilderness, wherein there is no man; to satisfy the desolate and waste ground; and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth? Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew? Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?”
One plus one equals two.
Two plus two equals four.
Regardless of how much you want it to, or how zealously you try to make it do so, one plus one will not equal three, nor will two plus two equal five. Math just doesn’t work that way.
Up late one night reading Carol Grant Gould’s enchanting “The Remarkable Life of William Beebe; Explorer And Naturalist,” I happened upon the story of Beebe meeting Henry Gaylord Wilshire, the somewhat eccentric socialist millionaire for whom Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles is named (because he owned the property upon which much of it was constructed).