Descriptive River

Once again, transcribing from my college honors English notebook, a passage regarding a river.  This was part of a 3-part assignment, which was to take an object and write a paragraph about it from the descriptive, expository, and narrative viewpoints.  This one was, in my opinion, the most successful.

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Nestled in the lush fold of two meeting mountains is a river.  It is not the sluggish puddling river of the South, nor the crashing roaring river of the Rockies.  It is not even a river, really, it's mostly like a grown-up creek.  It has its roots deep in the high country, where miniscule trickles of pure rainwater dodge pebbles and leaves in their tiny gullies to join and create, eventually, this river.  Its waters are biting cold and sweet to taste, and so clear the rocky bed seems as if viewed through glass.  A watery stillness pervades the river's ravine, and nature seems achingly harmonious as a thrush parts the air with a liquid warble.  Giant trees lean over the tumbling waters, mingling their branches high above in a conversation of green peace and light.  Rays of sunlight find their way through this ancient canopy to dapple the banks and the river.  The earth exudes an old smell, one of many autumns past, of lives created, of visitors come and gone.  The river itself seems timeless.

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Note: at the time I had no idea what a thrush sounded like.  For all I know, they croak.

Something tells me there was a word count restriction for these assignments, because I could have been a heck of a lot more florid in my prose than this if given half a chance and a few more minutes.  Shoot, there are hardly any big words in there at all!