Field Note #7

Learning From the River

August 2, 2026 | 7:28 AM

Middle Prong is louder this morning than it was yesterday.

An overnight rain has given it a different voice. The water is no longer clear enough to see beneath the surface. Yesterday we measured the river's turbidity, or clarity. Today, the reading would certainly be different. The river rushes past in shades of tea and slate, folding over boulders before disappearing into deep green pockets. Places that were dry shoreline yesterday now lie beneath moving water.

Yesterday our assignment was simple. Not to sketch the trees, not the mountains, but just the river. We traced its path around rocks, watched branches redirect the current, marked riffles where the water churned with oxygen, and found the quiet eddies tucked behind boulders where the current pauses before joining the river again.

It's funny how often nature teaches without trying. From above, the river looks almost violent, but beneath the surface, I imagine something different. What would it feel like to sink to the bottom? To let the current move over your shoulders instead of carrying them yourself? To become still enough that the water does all the work?

I've spent most of my life around water. As a little girl, our family spent summers canoeing Missouri rivers. Later I raced competitively on the mighty Mississippi and the Big Muddy, the Missouri River. Today my life has brought me to East Tennessee where I spend my days fly fishing the tailwaters and, most of all, wandering the crystal-clear streams of the Smoky Mountains.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn't just learning to fish. I was learning to notice. These past few days at Tremont Institute we've been studying the science behind these mountain streams—measuring slope, temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, flow rate, and turbidity. We've searched for macro invertebrates beneath rocks, learning how tiny insects can tell us the health of an entire watershed.

For the first time, I found myself wondering less about the trout and more about everything beneath them. Where do the fish go when the river floods? Do they tuck beneath rocks and simply wait? How do the tiny insects survive when yesterday's home is swept downstream?

As humans, we often look at flooding water and think only of danger. Nature seems to see something else. A downed tree from last night's storm changes the current, but the river doesn't stop flowing. It simply finds another path. Fish move. Macroinvertebrates cling to a different rock. Log jams become shelter. Moist banks become homes for salamanders.

Nothing gives up. Everything adjusts. The river is always changing, yet somehow it remains a river.

I think we, as humans, become attached to how life is supposed to look. Then something unexpected happens, (a loss, an injury, a move, a season we never planned for) and we assume everything is ruined.

But maybe change is just another current. Not always easy, not always welcome, but sometimes the beginning of something we couldn't have imagined before.

This weekend gave me scientific knowledge. I learned how to calculate abiotic and biotic characteristics that shape a stream, but it also reminded me that every river tells two stories.

One can be measured.

The other can only be felt.

Today's Notes

Outside: 68° and humidLocation: Tremont Institute, Great Smoky Mountains National ParkStudying: Aquatic EcologyLearned: Riffles, runs, pools, eddies, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, pH, macroinvertebrates, and abiotic characteristics.Noticed: Yesterday's shoreline is today's river.Question I'm Taking Home: If the river is always changing and still remains a river, why do we expect ourselves to be any different?