More day 6 in MS

In Natchez the river stinks. It's flat and broad and iron rust and grey and it looks dead, but it's not, it's just very tired. While the Mississippi in Minnesota can betray a gentle but buoyant hope and even down in Missouri can cling to those expectations, nowhere on its length does it manifest that boyish exuberance that comes only from springing--a synonym of giving, not coincidentally.
The Mississipi is a taking river, sucking up all the waters of every rivulet and stream from the Rockies to the Appalachians. Like an old man (to dust off a hackneyed metaphor) who's spent his entire life taking, who once vainly expected to find life restoring novelty in each avaricious aquisition, and whose impotent lust finally now is worn off, in Natchez the river is jaded, flat and broad and it looks dead, but it's not, it's just very very tired.
In New Orleans where the river seems to lie in pieces, I fully expect to find them celebrating its wake.

Note to self: Change boyish to youthful.