Silent water runs... dry

I am filling in my writing backlog with an interesting tidbit. Our class's very first excursion was a a trip to the Rhine River, during the second week of our first on Sustainability and Governance. The Rhine River flows from the Swiss Alps out to the North Sea, and serves as a natural boundary between France and Germany.

A 'correction' was made on the river as a means to mitigate the effects of occasional flooding downstream, among other reasons and modifications, including the creation of a channel parallel to it on the French side. This keeps a small portion of the river dry for 360 days of a year, and is flooded for at least two meters for the rest of the five days, that is pretty much like an extended version of the parting of the Red Sea by Moses. A different landscape formed after this man-made intervention. One can see dry land where salmons should be thriving. Round and flat limestones are scattered and piled one on top of another, and if warm and sunny enough like when we went there, a couple of nude sun bathers behind the bush (not piled one on top of the other though).

The slanting, hollow-like carving on this stone was formed by the natural gush of water that used to flow in this now dry land. Just a few meters away from this watermarked chunk of earth is a paved road.