where do rivers start? Can we trace rivers to a spot where it starts to pour out like a tap?
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The biggest difficulty with “where a river starts” isn’t finding where the water starts, but deciding which specific creek that wouldn’t wet your ankles that feeds into what becomes the river counts as “the” river.
See the debates about the sources of the Nile and Amazon.
That said, yes, you can go to the specific hill where any stream starts. Although sometimes it’s difficult to tell. Some rivers start as springs pouring out of the ground or meltwater flowing from under a glacier or a creek flowing out of a lake, those are easy.
But other rivers, that are fed by rainwater straight from a hill, start as… Rainwater. Flowing on the ground. So you go to a hill that “the source” and you either see just some rain runoff, or nothing if it’s not raining, because the soil’s just draining downhill. The stream just sort of gradually appears, without a clear indication when you’re really free to call it a stream and not just “runoff”.
Source: I’ve been to a places like that, all variations.
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