The rivers and the lakes that you’re used to

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

While driving down the mountain from camping up Lightning Creek last weekend, I was reminded of a line from Confucius: “The beginning of wisdom is the ability to call things by their right names.”

I’ve never been accused of being “wise,” but I have always been interested in the names we use to describe our world. A highway is something wholly different from a lane. A pond brings a different picture to mind than a lake. A river is not the same as a creek. But is it? Are these terms more interchangeable than we believe?

Looking out over the white rocks littering the bed of Lightning Creek, I thought, “What makes this a creek and, say, Pack River a river? Are they not born as one and the same?”

Lighting Creek, which comes down from the mountains above Hope and empties into the Clark Fork River and Lake Pend Oreille. Courtesy photo.

It turns out, there are no official rules that designate a body of water as a creek instead of a river. Both are tributaries that help transfer fresh water — be it from snow, a glacier or a spring — from higher ground to the ocean.

But what makes a creek a creek and a river a river? If you follow Pack River to its origins at Harrison Lake, it’s little more than a trickling freshet where it begins, just like Lightning Creek. Even the mighty Mississippi River starts as a humble trickle in Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota before it flows 2,348 miles down the entire continent until draining into the Gulf of Mexico below New Orleans.

Why must Lightning Creek be labeled a lesser creek while Pack River enjoys its higher status as a river? Aren’t they both rivers in our hearts?

Instead of rules that designate what a body of water is called, there are plenty of guidelines. Creeks are generally smaller waterways that have characteristics of rivers, but might not have new branches or tributaries as rivers do. Also, a river is larger and deeper than a creek, but the size and depth are, again, nebulous.

Hydrologists generally refer to bodies of water that drain significant watersheds as rivers, while tributaries to the rivers are called creeks. But this isn’t always the case. For example, the Chadakoin River in Jamestown, N.Y. drains into the Cassadaga Creek.

Others rely on homespun wisdom, such as, “If you can jump across, it’s a crick. If you can walk across it without getting your belt wet, it’s a crick. Anything bigger is a river.”

(The difference between a “crick” and a “creek” depends wholly on how many teeth you still have in your head.)

But the problem with these definitions is that there are just as many exceptions to the rule. Lightning Creek is a trickle in late summer, but you’d better not try to cross it in June when it’s raging with snowmelt.

We haven’t even gotten into the lesser terms like stream, brook, freshet and run. 

The United States Geological Survey does have a rubric classifying any body of water flows downhill as a “stream.” Streams are then further defined not by width, depth or length, but by a system known as “stream ordering.” 

First-order streams are the smallest ones that have no tributaries. These are often called “brooks” or “rivulets,” which one could hop across easily without getting wet.

A second-order stream is often the result of a merger between two first-order streams. These are commonly called “creeks” and might require a bridge or stepping stones, or perhaps wading, to cross.

Third-order streams are larger, forming from the merging of two second-order streams or creeks. These would require bridges or wading to cross, if not swimming. Third-order streams are generally called “branches” in the headwater regions of watersheds.

Fourth-order streams are bigger still, involving the merging of two third-order streams, qualifying them as rivers. These require big bridges, boats or swimming to cross.

That covers rivers, but what about lakes?

Minnesota is famously called the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” but how many of those lakes are actually just ponds? What’s the difference between the two?

Just like rivers and creeks, it’s complicated. Generally, a lake is defined as a permanent waterbody of relatively still water at least one hectare — about 2.5 acres — in size, with or without dams or other shoreline alterations. 

Using this definition, a team of Michigan State University researchers declared there were 479,950 lakes across the lower 48 states, and though Minnesota’s “10,000 lakes” sure sounds like a lot, it isn’t enough to claim having the most lakes in the nation. It’s actually fourth. 

Texas has 43,343 lakes, Florida has 35,508 and Georgia has 32,664. Minnesota comes in fourth with 29,669 lakes, which means their license plates are t lying to us. (Idaho is far back in the pack, with only 2,000 lakes in the state).

To make their slogan work, Minnesotans need to include the caveat that the state has 10,000 lakes greater than 7.67 hectares. Or they can change the license plates to read, “29,669 lakes,” though that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

In reality, there is no technical difference between lakes and ponds, other than the general belief that lakes are large and deep, ponds short and shallow. But these definitions often fall short.

Maine’s Great Pond claims to be the largest in the nation, with a surface area of 8,533 acres and a shoreline that stretches about seven miles long and four miles wide. For scale, our nearby Round Lake comes in at about 55 acres.

There are a few more rules in place when it comes to classifications of waterfalls. In order to be deemed a waterfall, a segment of water must drop at least five feet. From there, waterfalls are further ordered as tiered, multi-step, cascade, fan, horsetail or a plunge, like Palouse Falls in Washington.

If you happen to witness these water bodies on a glacier, the names change again: a lake is now a “supraglacial lake,” and a glacial waterfall is called a “moulin.”

Whether you call it a creek or a river, a lake or a pond, a waterfall or a moulin, the water cares not. One man’s pond is another’s lake, and one woman’s river might really be a creek.

The water flows regardless of what we call it. 

That’s just fine with me.