[Trending News] The Last Windrow: Can a man love a river? Of course!

Can a person love a river? Well, yes, that it did happen to me.

The river is the Big Sioux River that winds its way along the border between southeast South Dakota and northwest Iowa. If I could have sent a Valentine’s Day card to “Sioux,” I would have.

I write about this waterway because I grew up visiting its banks many times. The “river,” as my uncles called it, flowed out of the South Dakota prairie and wound its way south to finally be swallowed up in the Missouri River near Sioux City. As a kid I followed my uncles in the early mornings to the river’s banks to check their “trot lines” for channel catfish.

I belly crawled through its weedy shorelines hoping to ambush some wayward northern mallard a week before Thanksgiving. I fast walked behind coonhounds that bellowed their way on a raccoon track, hoping the raccoon didn’t swim the river and end up somewhere in the Dakotas. That meant the dogs would not be coming back until after midnight.

I sat with my dad along the muddy banks with our fishing rods propped up in the forks of green willow branches waiting for some bumbling carp to suck in one of our delectable “dough-ball” offerings.

Yes, these and other experiences reside inside my head when I think about the “Big Sioux.”

I might even have had a hand in saving the natural river, which has always been prone to flooding in the spring or after a cloudburst up north. There is no more fertile soil than that that lies along the fields that border the Big Sioux. The gumbo soil that lies there can produce crops in years when other land in the vicinity goes dry.

I once worked heavy equipment along the river in search of gravel and rock. Black topsoil 12 feet deep had to be removed before the gravel could be reached. On a good year, even without much fertilizer, 100 bushel an acre corn could be grown. The river’s flood waters produced silt that provided that possibility.

But, the river also flooded and there were years when no farming was possible because water covered the fields. Fortunately, not many people built their houses near those flood plains.

I knew one man who had his house perched on a high bank just above the river. On a fishing excursion I bumped into him and asked him how he dealt with the floods that no doubt covered his house’s floors from time to time.

He responded: “Well, when a flood comes, I just move out and to higher ground. When I come back after the flood, I scoop out the mud, open the windows and dry out for spell.”

He had it figured out.

My little effort to save the river came when I was 12 years old. The Little Sioux River, once touted as the best catfish river in Iowa, also had flood issues. As a result, the Corps of Engineers straightened the lower reaches of that river and made it flood-proof.

That meant a straight line ditch where once the river ran unchecked. To me, that was about as sanitized as a wild river could look, and there was a plan to look at doing the same thing to the Big Sioux.

In my 12-year-old mind, the only way I had to object was to write a letter to the Iowa Conservation Department office in protest of straightening the Big Sioux. I don’t know if my young handwritten letter had any effect, but ultimately the plan to straighten the “Sioux” came to a screeching halt and today the river runs untamed on its original crooked path.

No doubt some might not agree with my thoughts in that letter, but I feel good about having written it.

And so, I’m in love with this wandering border stream even though I no longer plod along its muddy banks in search of a catfish, chase a raccoon or a shoot a duck. It just makes me feel good that it’s still there in its natural state for others to discover.

If the “river” had a mailbox, I’d send it a valentine.

See you next time. Okay?