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The Case for the Potomadoah Nearly two years ago I visited Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. I walked to the point,where the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers meet and conjoin. I was advised that fromthere on to the Chesapeake Bay, the Shenandoah loses its identity to be consumed by thePotomac. I studied the dark, murky, foreboding river, with bluffs plummeting down intoit. Images of a primeval monster lurking just below the surface, like at Loch Ness, cameinto my mind. Then I walked over to the Shenandoah, wide but shallow and clear, withwelcoming stepping stones which lead you out nearly to its middle. Lovely tree-canopied picnic areas lined its shore. I pictured Huck Finn with Tom Sawyer skipping stones andchewing on sprigs of straw. What gave the deep, dark scary river the right to supersedethe friendly, happy frolicky river? That didn’t seem fair to me.Although the Potomac may carry a larger volume of water than the Shenandoah to their confluence, the Shenandoah’s history and tradition dictate that in all fairness it should notsubmit in full to the Potomac. It should, instead, take second billing in sharing the nameof the merging of the two bodies of water, therefore, this river, upon the meeting of thePotomac and the Shenandoah, would become the Potomadoah. I will support this theoryin the paragraphs below.Lending itself to this equation are the river’s nicknames: the Potomac – “Nation’sRiver,” and the Shenandoah – “Daughter of the Stars.” Obviously, the stars are in space,which is an infinitely larger area than the Nation, or even the globe on which the nationexists.The Shenandoah, in fact, was discovered nearly fifty years before the Potomac. The firstrecorded encounter was in 1669 by John Lederer, a German doctor; and before theRevolutionary War, our future first President George Washington was commissioned tosurvey parts of the Shenandoah Valley for Lord Thomas Fairfax. Hence, Washingtonencountered the Shenandoah long before the Potomac, the existence of which wasn’trecorded until 1736 by Colonel William Mayo. So, not only was the Potomac discoveredmuch later, it was uncovered by a man whose name resembles a food high in saturatedfat. We all know that mayonnaise is really bad for you. Even light mayonnaise can stillclog your arteries. (True, Captain John Smith recorded experiencing the Potomac in1608, but since he spelled it wrong, it doesn’t count.)Parks named for the two rivers speak volumes. The Potomac is represented in this corner  by the 11,535 acre Potomac State Forest; and in this corner, wearing blue trunks, the tagteam of the 197,438.76 acre Shenandoah National Park and the 1,604 acre ShenandoahRiver State Park, both in Virginia. Enough said.The Shenandoah River even has a salamander named after it. The closest the Potomacgets to an animal-related honor is Potomac Horse Fever. I’d rather catch a ShenandoahSalamander than Potomac Horse Fever, wouldn’t you?
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