Dick Goin said, "A river, it doesn’t want to be tethered, it wants to run around, it wants to be sinuous."  Here's a great visual example of just that: an aerial time-lapse of a river in Peru meandering over 25 years. Many rivers can't move like this anymore due to the construction of dams, levees, roads, railways and houses.

http://i.imgur.com/rcxfVpA.gifv