“Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their
home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.”
― Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road
― Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road
I grew up near the banks of the Ohio
River, a mere three blocks to the west of my childhood home. As a child I fished from its banks, walked
and rode over bridges crossing it, was a passenger in boats upon its waters,
and occasionally watched it flood as high as the corner of the street on which
I lived. But I knew very little of the
river’s lore or history. And while the
river often captured my imagination, I never thought of it as beautiful.
I eventually moved away and lived
near other waters and rafted sections of
the Youghiogheny, Nantahala, New
and Gauley Rivers, canoed down the Delaware River, kayaked down the Shenandoah
and Buckhannon Rivers and in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, and in kayak and sailboat
explored New York’s Hudson River, the New York Harbor and Jamaica Bay as well
as other nearby New York waters. I never thought I would come back home to the banks of
the Ohio.
Year’s after leaving the Ohio behind,
while reading Stephen E. Ambrose’s Undaunted
Courage; I learned that the Ohio River served as Lewis and Clark’s approach
route as the Corp of Discovery made its way by flatboat from Pittsburgh to the
mouth of the Missouri. Ambrose’s account rekindled my latent memory about
learning that one of the members of that expedition, Sargent Patrick Gass,
eventually settled in and spent the rest of his life in my home town along the
Ohio’s eastern bank. I would later visit Gass’s grave and see the historical
marker commemorating the Corp of Discovery floating past my home town.
After being away for thirty-seven
years and only returning for rare visits, I recently came back to live in the town
of my childhood where I learning things about the town’s and regions’ history
and culture that I never knew, including the lore and history of the Ohio
River. Some of the lessons are accidental. Some are intentional.
Not long after coming home some
friends invited me to their farmhouse for dinner. During the evening’s dinner conversation, as
we were sharing stories about family and friends as well as the area, I learned
that the Ohio River was once known as La Belle Riviere or LaBelle Riviere, a
French name meaning The Beautiful River.
Hearing that tidbit of history, I wondered why I had not earlier learned that,
or if I had learned it, why I had forgotten it.
Thanks to the research capabilities
of the internet I have since learned that the Ohio River was
once known by dozens of other names and that it was not until 1931 that The
Board of Geographic Names settled on “Ohio River” as the river’s official name. I have also learned that the French and
Native Americans considered what we now call the Alleghany River as part of the
Ohio. Had history turned out differently, had the French maintained their
claims in the New World and the British not prevailed, the mighty river that
forms the boundary between many states might now be called La Belle Riviere and that those of us living along its banks might now be speaking French as our native language.
More recently, I learned that Dillon
Bustin wrote a song entitled La Belle Riviere
that captures the river’s history and beauty as well as its ecological
degradation. Yet Dillon’s lyrics also
hold hope, hope that the mighty La Belle Riviere might can once again live up
to her name.
