The phrase "Mississippi River" conjures a swirl of images in our collective imagination: wide, turbulent, muddy waters; chugging steamships and heavily laden barges; violent, life-altering floods; maybe even Mark Twain chomping on a pipe. Everything outsized, legendary. But at the headwaters of the river, in a quiet corner of northern Minnesota, the scene is a world away from all of that.
Lake Itasca -- whose name is a Latin neologism meant to translate as "true head" -- was first identified as the source of the 2,300-mile Mississippi in 1832. Six decades later, by a margin about as narrow as the creeks that feed the lake, the Minnesota Legislature declared the area -- which is home to more than 100 lakes in all -- a state park. Today it's a popular attraction, with nearly 500,000 annual visits and a year-round naturalist program.
But when photographer Mark Hirsch visited Itasca for Grist in mid-March, he had it all to himself, save for the park's staffers. Spending a few days at the remote location was an eye-opener, he says: "Having lived near the Mississippi River my entire life, I have always viewed it as a wonderful but dirty, polluted river. At the headwaters, it is a crystal-clear stream ... It was a fantastic time of year to visit the park and experience its solitude."
Want to see more of the Mississippi? Check out Grist's road trip to riverfront cities, our special series on the Army Corps of Engineers and agriculture in the heartland, and Wayne Curtis's dispatches from New Orleans.
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Comments
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sagetimber Posted 4:05 am
10 Apr 2008
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Kiara Posted 5:08 am
10 Apr 2008
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caniscandida Posted 4:00 pm
10 Apr 2008
Of course, I love the photos of the three animals. The personalities of the otters especially come through.
By the way, there is nothing Latin, from any period, about "Itasca." In classical Latin, "true head" is "caput verum;" "true source" is "fons vera;" "true eye" (i.e., as in Spanish "ojo," meaning source, by way of Arabic "'ayin," from the Semitic metaphor of "eye" to mean "source of a river") is "oculus verus."
"True" in the sense of "faithful," "reliable," is "fidelis, fidelis, fidele." Hence, "caput fidele," "fons fidelis," "oculus fidelis."
My guess is, "Itasca" is either vaguely acronymic (perhaps the final "ca" is a way non-classical abbreviation of "caput"), or something from another language entirely, perhaps Native American.
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Kobre Posted 2:44 am
11 Apr 2008
Ken Kobre
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Green Granny Posted 8:45 pm
11 Apr 2008
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Katharine Wroth Posted 12:59 am
13 Apr 2008
Glad you enjoyed the images!
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caniscandida Posted 3:47 am
13 Apr 2008
"Veritas" does indeed mean "truth." But the two nouns together, "veritas" plus "caput," do not amount to anything secondarily meaningful. It is only in the Germanic languages, and in Sanskrit, so far as I know, that you can thrust two nouns together, rudely, and come up with a third new entity: e.g., "truth serum." Greek, Latin and the Romance languages are not quite so manipulable.
Maybe Grist should offer a platform for nature photographers, even do a regular feature.
And not just outdoorsy, humans-not-permitted photography. What ever happened to the young woman who was featured last year (or so) in Grist, who was engaged in studying the environmental significance of urban landscapes, and appreciating them as truly "natural" subjects?
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