As I walk along the flood level Red River, the song keeps going through my head.
The word “valley” is a misnomer. While the Red River drains the region, it did not create a valley wider than a few hundred feet. It is remarkably flat; from its origin – the confluence of Bois de Sioux and Otter Tail rivers near Breckenridge, MN, to the international border near Emerson, Manitoba, its gradient is only about 1 foot per mile. The river, slow and small in most seasons, does not have the energy to cut a gorge. Instead it meanders across the silty bottomlands in its progress north. In consequence, high water has nowhere to go, except to spread across the old lake bed in “overland flooding”.
Footloose & Fancy Free 