the game of pursuing rivers to their sources was first described by
shultheiss as a traditional japanese ritual or art or sport
& he even gave it the name sawanabori
however my own subsequent pursuit of this word has turned up little but a
japanese surname
& since he does not answer my inquiries about it
my latest guess is that this was actually an elaborate hoax by him
& that the name was probably selected to honor a former girlfriend
nevertheless i myself have been doing just this ritual from my youth
& have drunk at quite a few such sources
& would have been honored to learn it was a zen or samurai practice
the greatest fun comes in trying to discern at every fork which branch is
the most major one
& in tracing the last trickle to its usually potable fountainhead
& i can tell you there are many named rivers like the mississippi which
themselves lose track of their own main stem
thus the attribution of the nile source here fails to observe that the lake
itself may have a major tributary that could be traced further
this is certainly true of lake itasca
which is also nominally the source of the mississippi
m
>
>Just some pics to start this pursuit:
><http://home.freeuk.net/elloughton13/sources.htm>
>http://home.freeuk.net/elloughton13/sources.htm
>
>Peter S.
>
> Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
><http://rd.yahoo.com/M=170603.1361494.2950176.2/D=egroupmail/S=1700126166:N/A=55
>0983/?http://www.newaydirect.com target="_top"> Your use of Yahoo!
>Groups is subject to the <http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/> Yahoo! Terms
>of Service.