Guide Evaluation
Is a River Alive?
By Robert MacfarlaneW.W. Norton & Co.: 384 pages, $32If you purchase books linked on our website, The Occasions might earn a fee from Bookshop.org, whose charges assist unbiased bookstores.
From the second line of Robert Macfarlane’s new ode to nature, I used to be caught within the present, rushed alongside the rapids of his exploration right into a query with basic penalties: Is that this river — that river, any river — alive? Not merely as an ecosystem or a house to animals, however is a river a dwelling being itself? In that case, does a river have reminiscence and intention? What about wants or rights? Every query begets one other, sweeping Macfarlane, his companions and now his readers alongside on that tide of thought.
Rivers don’t resemble life kinds as we’re used to them, although the language of rivers suggests they might. As our bodies of water, rivers have already got headwaters, mouths and arms. Seen from above, meandering rivers resemble vascular programs or neural networks. So why not assume they’ve ideas, emotions and wishes too? “For those who, like me, have been largely raised on rationalism, to imagine a river is alive in a way that exceeds the sum of the lives it contains is difficult, counterintuitive work,” the creator writes, although it appears early into the guide that he has already made his leap from rationalism to animism, not less than for the rivers he sees.
“Words make worlds,” he displays. “In English, we ‘it’ rivers, trees, mountains, oceans, birds, and animals: a mode of address that reduces them to the status of stuff.” A part of his quest, then, is to shift his considering: If rivers — and the remainder — are now not an it, can they be a who? In that case, then the river closest to my residence, the Los Angeles River (Paayme Paxaayt as named by the Tongva), is now not a river that flows however a river who flows. Does that change the river for me? That I’ve to maintain combating my pc’s grammar settings to disregard the “error” of “river who flows” suggests how far we’ve got to go. The thingness of nature is deeply set in Western thought; recalibration will probably be complicated.
Macfarlane’s title query takes him to a few international locations, every residence to threatened rivers: Los Cedros in Ecuador, Adyar River in India and Mutehekau Shipu (also referred to as Magpie River) in Canada. At every go to, he considers what the rivers give to us and what we give to them — an change of nurturing for poison, often. Human-led hazard circles every in numerous kinds: logging, air pollution, dams. One of many rivers is already thought-about useless, the opposite two are nonetheless vibrantly alive.
In every nation, Macfarlane is accompanied by the river’s allies, individuals who already see every water physique as dwelling and sometimes dwell close by as neighbors. These tales are peppered with rights of nature discussions exploring how Ecuador and New Zealand have prolonged to sure rivers authorized rights to circulation uninterrupted and established guardianship councils that try to talk for the rivers. He and allies take into account how activists in India and Canada are attempting to do the identical with out risking decreasing these authorized protections to performative nonsense.
Whereas these discussions may very well be weighed down by politics, Macfarlane’s contact is deft, giving us precisely sufficient to think about the query whereas additionally exhibiting us how this isn’t nearly rivers however about us. Sick rivers don’t finish at their banks, however unfold into communities. It’s no coincidence that my neighborhood, Frogtown, is now not residence to any frogs regardless of quick access to the river. (As soon as, earlier than the river was attacked, communities of toads hopped by yards and sang choruses within the night time.) As I learn this guide, I went on lengthy, ambling walks alongside the L.A. River, making an attempt to see it as Macfarlane would possibly. Maybe he would describe it as sick with air pollution, or jailed by concrete channeling. Would he see Paayme Paxaayt as hopeful? Defiant? Or doomed?
Macfarlane’s writing is as stunning because the rivers and the hope he’s describing. In all places he seems is artwork — a “sunset has slaughter in it,” a “cloud-forest is a steaming, glowing furnace of green,” a solar rises “red as a Coke can over the ocean” and “faced with a river, as with a god, apprehension splinters into apophasis.” His paragraphs circulation just like the water he admires: typically tranquil and simple, different instances a tumbling, mixing, effervescent torrent directed by commas, by no means promising a full cease. However don’t let his elegiac prose divert you — there’s a devoted scholar at work right here. There’s the apparent proof: an in depth glossary, and a notes and bibliography part that runs over 30 pages. Then there’s the extra refined proof: The entire guide is a weighty query whose reply impacts disciplines like regulation, enterprise, historical past and philosophy. Macfarlane takes us by every like creeks feeding right into a stream. The philosophical underpinning sees essentially the most spectacular transformation. He does his personal unlearning of anthropocentrism on the web page by his intense experiences with these three rivers, concluding solely when the rivers are performed with him: “I am rivered.” He’s exhibiting us the best way to do our personal unlearning, too.
How we view our relationship to nature is a crucial query that folks around the globe are reconsidering. Local weather change has disrupted many pure patterns, and we’re waking as much as the fact that options will contain greater than reusable water bottles and biodegradable straws. Right here in L.A., our yr kicked off with devastating fires that we’re nonetheless recovering from. The aftermath begs us to actually take into account the questions Macfarlane is asking. Are our rivers alive? What about our forests? In that case, how are we going to deal with them?
Castellanos Clark, a author and historian in Los Angeles, is the creator of “Unruly Figures: Twenty Tales of Rebels, Rulebreakers, and Revolutionaries You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of.”
