I HAVE HEARD Robert Macfarlane describe the title of one of his most recent books as a portal question: Is a River Alive? On its face, the question seems straightforward. But, like walking through the mouth of a cave, once you enter into the question, cavernous possibilities emerge. Unlike Macfarlane’s previous work, Underland, this book doesn’t spelunk beneath the ground’s surface. It moves upstream and downstream in a fluvial tongue. The prose—forever on the brink of poetic—meanders like a broad river in summer before narrowing into rapids of argument, only to fan out again into reflective backwaters.
Macfarlane aims to develop, for rivers, what Potawatomi author and botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer has called “a grammar of animacy.” He writes, “A good grammar of animacy can still re-enchant existence. To imagine that a river is alive causes water to glitter differently. New possibilities of encounter emerge—and loneliness retreats a step or two.”
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