Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River (circa 1944)

"The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise..."

 ~Mark Twain in Eruption

From Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River, by W. O. Dement for Harold Fisk (1944)

This cartographic beauty wasn't pulled from the mind of some orphic minded Art-Informal devotee trying to focus on the "uneasy co-existence of mind and body." It is the result of some 16,000 soil samples combined with aerial topography of the lower-Mississippi and shows Big Muddy's past routes which it travelled.

The yeoman's work, which was started in 1941 by geologist Harold Fisk and his accompanying team, was performed for a 1944's report titled "Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River."

Truly an awesome and humbling reminder that within all of the apparent chaos in nature there exists a working order of the highest level.