Mountains and Water and a River - Moving Along with Radiation Too

Starting today, I am shifting into earlier scheduling for my Radiation Therapy. Today will be 9:00 am, so not much different than the 9:15 am I've been on. But tomorrow, I'll drop down to 8:00 am and I even have one 7:45 am before I've completed the therapy. That means you might be getting very truncated posts on those earlier days because I still want to exercise on the treadmill and shower before I sit down in front of the computer. I'm just warning you - there may be a day or two there where I might be unable to post, or might post quite a bit later than usual. 

The Canadian Rockies are stunning. I recall my parents 
having taken a train trip through Canada to Banff. Mom 
was singularly unimpressed. When she took a trip, she 
wanted to meet new people and go shopping, not look at a 
lot of scenery - much of which looked like mountains 
she already knew in Colorado. But I adore the mountains, 
and think I'd really enjoy a train trip through Canada 
and the Banff Rockies. 

Today's treadmill was awesome. I spent 30 minutes in the Canadian Rockies - one of my favorite places to be. It was stunning scenery and lots of mountains with snow on the top and glacial waters gathering at the bottom. I might enjoy the desert vistas of New Mexico and Arizona, but my heart always belongs in the mountains - those deep, deep roots and high, high peaks that have snow on them year-'round. I suppose that's what comes from being a Colorado girl, but I live in an area where a 600 foot incline is considered worthy of having a ski lift and slopes for downhill. What a joke! 

You can walk across the Mississippi River at its' 
birthplace at Lake Itasca, Minnesota. It grows - a 
LOT - before it pours into the Gulf of Mexico (or 
Gulf of America if you want to be "woke"). 

Where I live was scoured flat by the great glaciers of the Ice Age back long, long ago. I have the great rivers and what seems like a million lakes (only 10,000 or so, according to the state slogan - LOL). I live in the state that gives birth to the mighty Mississippi. You can go to Lake Itasca and actually walk across where the great river is born. By the time the river hits the Twin Cities, it's already wide and deep enough to handle barge traffic, and it only continues to grow and grow as it moves south towards it's mouth at the great city of New Orleans. 

If you look carefully at the map above, you'll see 
Baton Rouge below the word River in the title. 
That's where the various Mississippi River Deltas 
begin. The river currently moves along south of New 
Orleans to the Port of New Orleans, but it keeps 
depositing soil as it goes, and changing the 
landscape it passes through. It's a huge river and it 
moves a lot of dirt downstream. 

It's the great rivers of the world that have allowed people to gather, join together, build settlements, towns, cities and nations, and pull together within national identities. Water is life, and human beings always gathered around dependable water sources first, then looked for the other things that would make long-term settlement possible. That's when things like climate, available food sources, and other people who might be allies or enemies all came into play. But water was the first thing, because without water, there is no life on this blue planet that is primarily liquid. Have an excellent day, I'm off to grab a quick breakfast and head over to Radiology. I'll be back tomorrow. Slava Ukraini.