When I was in Fargo last month, I drove north along the river to visit my beloved slough.

I’m currently working on a story about the Red River of the North and its destructive spring floods. The Red has been a constant presence in my life: first as a child, and now as an adult. Almost every spring, my parents continue fighting the river from their home in Fargo, just as they did when I was a kid.

I grew up in the country outside Fargo, and I spent a big chunk of my childhood near the river, exploring an island surrounded by wetlands. My island is still there, and so is the marshy slough I used to navigate on a homemade raft.

But the farmhouse is gone now, taken away after one of the last great floods, and the wheat fields where I used to roam are currently doing double-duty as a flood channel.

During a historic drought like this one, the river seems placid and innocent. It’s easy to think that our dikes and the flood channels and the high earthen walls are unnecessary. But we need them, because the river will always come back.