Anabranch

The fresh waters that wander through the countryside reach out like tentacles searching for some long lost home to return to. They break apart and reunite, turning the landscape into a patchwork of channels that churn in a slow simmer beneath the hazy sun. You sit and watch the world carry on, running its course the way it has for a million years, always changing and always remaining the same. An anabranch is a section of a river or stream that diverts from the main channel or stem of the watercourse and rejoins the main stem downstream. Local anabranches can be the result of small islands in the watercourse. In larger anabranches, the flow can diverge for a distance of several kilometers before rejoining the main channel. The term anabranch, in its hydrological meaning, is used more frequently in Australia than in the rest of the English-speaking world. The term braided river describes watercourses which are divided by small islands into multiple channel threads within a single main channel, but the term does not describe the multiple channels of an anabranching river. A distributary is a branch of a river that does not rejoin the main channel; these are common on and near river deltas. A bayou is often an anabranch. The Bahr el Zeraf in southern Sudan splits from the Bahr al Jabal section of the White Nile and flows for 240 km (150 mi), before rejoining the White Nile proper upriver from Malakal.