There are three famous Red Rivers in the U.S. There’s the 550-mile Red River of the North that flows north from North Dakota to Minnesota; there’s the 1290-mile Red River of the South that flows southeast from Texas to Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, and there’s this approximately 40-foot red river of Brooklin, Maine, that runs southwest from near the top of Barbara’s garden to near the bottom.:
There may be a few carpers who want to point out that the Brooklin river is famous only to hundreds of nectar-loving little creatures and maybe a handful of people. But those few admirers of the Brooklin flow know that scented serenity is better than silty sediment every time.
Yes, the first two imposing rivers were named for their reddish silt, which harms fish and sometimes is disgusting just to look at. The third, more demure, flow gets its very local name from fresh and fragrant scarlet bee balm, which is a paradise for clean-living, hard-working humming birds, butterflies, bees and (as shown below) clearwing hummingbird moths.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on July 17 and 15, 2026.)