 |
||
 |
||
 |
• HOME • GENERAL STORE • NATURAL HERITAGE • HISTORY, CULTURE & CRAFTSMANSHIP |
||||
|
Natural Heritage
• Ozark Springs |
|||||
| Ozark Springs Index • MERAMEC • ROUND SPRING • ALLEY SPRING • CAVE SPRING Natural Heritage Index • Fishing • Hunting • Camping • Conservation • Bass Pro Blog • Hills & Hollows • Rivers & Lakes • Springs • Caves • Rocks & Fossils • Trees & Shrubs • Plants & Herbs • Hill Critters • Flyin' Critters • Water Critters • Snakes & Such • Forgotten Critters |
|||
Particularly to flatlanders, there's something enchanting about Ozarks springs. The scene of water boiling up from the earth itself (as at Greer Spring, plate 2) or cascading from beneath a high rock bluff (as at Turner Spring), tends to conjure up a variety of images.
Images of creation itself. Half-remembered lessons of Moses in the desert. Legends of magic waters from old Celtic and Japanese mythologies.
Understanding the mechanics of springs does little to remove the sense of magic.
The Ozark Mountains are made up mostly of limestone. After enough years, limestone erodes in odd patterns, creating fissures and sinkholes that swallow up rainwater as if it were never there.
Gravity pushes that water lower and lower into caverns — underground streambeds — where it courses along. Millions of gallons of rainwater, hidden far below the surface — lost rivers.
Eventually, fissures occur in the ceilings of these lost rivers. When that happens, the river boils up out of the mountain itself.
A spring is born.
Before the days of water towers, pumping stations and harnessed electricity, springs were places of great importance, first to Native Americans, then to European settlers.
Native Americans considered springs culturally and spiritually significant, seeing more in the cold running water than a place to water horses.
European immigrants built mills.
Today, a few Ozark springs continue to supply pure water (plate 4). Many old mills remain (such as Alley Spring Mill, plate 6), testament to the days when the community still revolved around something as simple as flowing water and ground corn.
Despite the changes in the world around us, the old, old Ozark springs tend to take us back to a simpler time and place.
Watercress still abounds in the old mill ponds and streams (plate 5). On the stream banks, witch hazel still blooms each February (plate 3). The Spring of the Summer Sky — now Blue Spring — still churns water from a cavernous well 300 feet deep (plate 1).
And for a moment, all can seem right with the world.
Joshua Heston, editor
03/17/09
“For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills....”
— Deuteronomy 8:7
Ozark Spring photo plates
All photo credits: J. Heston. Lucky13 Studios© Archive. 02/18/09, 02/19/09, 02/20/09, 02/28/09