  River networks exhibit a complex ramified structure that has inspired decades
of studies. Yet, an understanding of the propagation of a single stream remains
elusive. Here we invoke a criterion for path selection from fracture mechanics
and apply it to the growth of streams in a diffusion field. We show that a
stream will follow local symmetry in order to maximize the water flux and that
its trajectory is defined by the local field in its vicinity. We also study the
growth of a real network. We use this principle to construct the history of a
network and to find a growth law associated with it. The results show that the
deterministic growth of a single channel based on its local environment can be
used to characterize the structure of river networks.
