Is a River Alive? - Robert MacFarlane
We found this book to be beautifully written, lyrical and surprisingly easy to read, sweeping you along with the descriptions of amazing places. The nine springs outside Cambridge are described with a similar level of wonder as the cloud forest of Ecuador. There were sections that pulled you up short and made you think, as well as sections where you discovered that by being lost in the language had meant you had lost the meaning - but having to re-read the passage was not a chore.
The story travels on many levels, which reflects his description of the water / river traveling below in the soil and roots, on the surface in the streams and in the air within the clouds and winds. The book can be read as a boys-own adventure tale as he hikes the mountains and gorges and kayaks down ravines, and as a result can seem a rather masculine story of guts and brawn. The women are wise and mystic - which of course we are (!) but this can jar.
A river is more than H2O + gravity. Our capitalistic world has reduced the river to a commodity, a resource to be used and disregarded. We once saw rivers and streams as entities, as deities, as things to be respected for the life they bring and the destruction they can wreck. Now we may not think of the river as alive but we all know what someone means when they say it is dead.
We felt that a river definitely had "rights", but how do you balance the competing rights of humans and nature, or the needs of the farmer, home owner, business and fish or birds or soil? Our river Rother has legal protections from pollution, but how often does the Environment Agency check and prosecute? Does the EA really have teeth and the staff in order to do the job we expect it to do? And can the government afford to fund it sufficiently in the face of so many competing demands?
ERA grew from caring for the river Rother. The website has a page dedicated to the results of our testing. But how many people in the catchment area can be said to love the river? We only see glimpses of it as we cross a bridge and can rarely walk along its banks or paddle in its waters (and the latest test results show that this may be a good thing!) People protect what they love. We need more access, and that is hard around here. Rivers flow through land that is owned, and the public has no right to follow the water by foot or boat.
A question raised was how well you know your catchment area. Do you know where the water from your garden goes, from the stream to the river to the sea?
Our rivers need to be loved and cared for, they need guardians to fight their cause. Maybe it is time to adopt your local water course and check it is alive.
Elizabeth Eveleigh