Is a River Alive?: Robert Macfarlane’s Liquid Intellect - Scientific Inquirer

Swimming the Río Los Cedros: A Scene from ‘Is a River Alive?’

Is a river a being? Can it suffer, heal, or speak — if not in words, then in water’s own fluent language? Robert Macfarlane These are the questions at the heart of Is a River Alive?, the bestselling new book by acclaimed nature writer Robert Macfarlane (Underland, The Old Ways). Part travelogue, part ecological inquiry, the book explores a powerful idea whose time has come: that rivers are not just resources, but living entities deserving of re…

Is a River Alive?

“Who are your waters?” The answer to this Māori greeting reveals something about both the person responding and the lands in which they dwell. The question also provides a strong yet elusive subtext that flows through Robert MacFarlane’s latest book, Is a River Alive? To the Māori, running waters are kin and ancestors, possessed of agency and rights of their own. A river is not an “it” but a “who,” and this crucial distinction lies at the heart …

Is a River Alive?: Robert Macfarlane’s Liquid Intellect - Scientific Inquirer

Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive? is less a book than a murmuration—fluid, flashing, sharply turned. It slips its leash early, refusing to be simply travelogue or philosophy or plea. Instead, it dares to be all three, all at once, just as a river dares to be glacier, snake, mirror, wound.We follow Macfarlane not so much as a guide but as a kind of apostle—though whether he serves nature or language is never quite resolved. His journeys acros…