There weren’t any actual rivers sufficiently near the places I have lived for me to play in it, but I liked playing near the brook nearby and pretending the fern plants were an ancient landscape. I used to wish I had had a video camera and could make a movie with my toy dinosaurs.
I’ve played in the lakes we have lived nearby and I really liked that. In fact, my interest in the lake just by our home in the second place I lived and the small leaking red rowboat by the shore, might just qualify as my first special interest.
The next person had toy dinosaurs.