Scott D Wright - Book Review - Nature
Is a River Alive?
by Robert Macfarlane (publication date May 20, 2025)
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-393-24213-3 384 pages
Published by W.W. Norton - May, 2025
https://wwnorton.com/books/is-a-river-alive
Overview from the publisher W. W. Norton:
Hailed in the New York Times as “a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler,” Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law.
Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada—imperiled respectively by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane’s house, a stream who flows through his own years and days. Powered by dazzling prose and lit throughout by other minds and voices, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers—and always has.
General reviews: Mostly positive and I include a one review that was fairly critical
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218569826-is-a-river-alive 4.43 out of 5 - 202 ratings and 43 reviews
LA Times Book Review: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2025-05-15/is-a-river-alive-review-robert-macfarlane
Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/robert-macfarlane/is-a-river-alive/ - Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.
New Scientist review by Rowan Hooper https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26635410-200-robert-macfarlane-is-wrong-to-cast-rivers-as-life-forms-in-new-book/ - but need to be a subscriber. I was able to access via my Apple News account.
Hooper was skeptical of the perspective of Macfarlane in that “…Macfarlane’s book isn’t a work of science, but more like a manifesto for a different way of looking at the world. It is trying to persuade by appealing to our emotions, and in this it succeeds. Nature does have rights and we should acknowledge and enforce them to protect our world.” Hooper also claimed that, “What I think Macfarlane is saying in this book is that we need to adopt animism, a world view of many Indigenous peoples, in order to stop the destruction of our planet. Animism is the belief that non-human entities – animals as well as trees and plants, but also rocks and rivers and mountains – have a soul or spirit.”
Interview with Robert Macfarlane with Emergence https://emergencemagazine.org/conversation/is-a-river-alive/
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Review by Scott D Wright
The river
where you set
your foot just now
is gone -
those waters giving way to this,
now this.
- Heraclitus
(translated by Brooks Haxton (p. 27; 2001; Viking Books)
To put this book into context, rivers have been a significant natural “life force” for me personally - the Mississippi River - growing up in Louisiana - New Orleans and Baton Rouge and then the Atchafalaya River as well - in the heart of southern Louisiana. The Calcasieu and the Sabine River on the southwestern side of Louisiana. Rivers have cast a spell on me with the enormity of water that flows onward as I stand on the shoreline or bank of a river. This is where I learned to love biology (in general) and appreciate the ‘eye’ of the naturalist in the rich diversity of species in the river, along the river, and around the river. Some rivers stand out for me as not only iconic, but living symbols of the western United States. The Columbia, the Snake, and the Yellowstone in the West. I have fished in and floated by canoe on White, Kings River and the Buffalo River in Arkansas - and learned to hone my photography skills on these rivers. I have learned the sheer power of rivers while whitewater rafting in Utah with the Colorado and the Green River. But I admit I did not think of the river as being alive - at that time.
I have for a long time of my life - perceived the (or a) river as a recreational opportunity or serve as a utilitarian function with boats and canoes, or to pilot barges, or for water skiing, or with outboard motors for transport. And I also perceived rivers as something to be “tamed” with damns and Army Corp of Engineers projects. Thus, rivers turned into reservoirs for fishing (e.g., Toledo Bend or Sam Rayburn or Table Rock Lake and Beaver Lake in Arkansas. But I did not ‘see’ the rivers as ‘alive’ - not yet.
With Macfarlane’s book, Is A River Alive? - I was reminded of other books I have read in the past decades that focus on the larger macro-scale issues of ecosystem health - and yet the focus of the authors seemed to offer the reader a closer look - at a smaller scale - of what is right in your backyard - or a short walk away - or in your local town or city. Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Annie Dillard’s, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, (1974), books by John Muir and the Sierra Nevada, Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, and books by E. O. Wilson. I was also reminded of the book - A River Runs Through It (Norman Maclean) and the film directed by Robert Redford (1992). This quote - and the setting of the river (in the film) captures the essence of the human connection to the river as something more than utilitarian or aesthetic - rather it was very close to what Macfarlane has portrayed in his recent book. The river is essential - yes…but also there is a reverence as well - as in the following quote (source IMDB):
“Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.”
Macfarlane writes with a similar layered feeling and “on-the-ground-there” experience of rivers in three different and (focused) smaller-scale locations: First, in the Ecuadorian cloud-forest named Los Cedros, the “Forests of the Cedars”; second the creeks, lagoons, and estuaries of the Chennai - in southeast India; and third, the Nitassinan, homeland to the Innu people, through which runs the Mutehekau Shipu (aka as Magpie River. Macfarlane proposes (right out of the gate) in the Introduction that, “This book is a journey into an idea that changes the world - the idea that a river is alive…What does such a recognition mean for perception, law and politics? It is an attempt to imagine water otherwise?” (p. 15).
The writing of Macfarlane is engaging and heart-felt. There is a passion and pathos to the message about the status and health of these rivers and how critical the rivers are to so many people. I think some readers will find this to be a “break-through” approach in terms of reaching an audience that may have not thought of rivers - in this way. That is…a different perspective. Perhaps, a paradigm shift in viewpoint. But others may scoff and find the approach to be lacking in the robust scientific method and so…lacking in empirical findings (e.g., data-driven science vs. phenomenological or ethnographic methods). The following quote captures the essence of a philosophical viewpoint which may not be necessarily a scientific perspective, “Chennai has complicated my sense of what Los Cedros had shown me: that the ‘aliveness’ of a river or forest isn’t endogenous to the object, a property possessed by a bounded body; rather it is a process which relocates ‘life’ to the interface and within the flux of which, at best, we understand ourselves to be extended generously outwards into a vast community of others.” (p. 184).
I think it is possible (in my opinion) to be both scientific/empirical and poetic/artistic in regards (and relation) to nature - and to be a naturalist in the field with both perspectives. I recall (and I have still have the book on my shelf) reading the book The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen (1978) which was a very personal account of a journey filled with both naturalist observations and the connection of the human condition to the landscape - and vice versa. That is, the interconnections that are present for that which we seek greater understanding of not only having a ‘life’ but what is indeed ‘alive’ as well. I think what is being illuminated here in the book is more than a rights of nature movement, it also a reckoning of integrating the human with ecology and ecology with humans such that we consider our position as not only “observers” making observations or “identifiers” making identifications - but we also appreciate the habitat - the environment - and the landscape - and the context - the milieu - the “ecotypes” that have a definitive impact and influence on the organism. And in that connection - can we and shall we consider the ethical and legal dimensions of “rights” associated with the river? The mountain - the grasslands, the creek, the forest? To a level where the naturalist contemplates many levels of existence on this planet - beyond what would only apply to one species (presumably) - Homo sapiens.
I have to admit - that I enjoy recording the observations of organisms and being involved in the identification process and when the image provides ‘markers’ for ID, but I also appreciate one or two additional images (when possible) of the organism observed with an image (or two) with context - and setting (in a place) - to see the habitat…which for some naturalists is considered not only informative about the organism (what is it?) , but also a part of the educational process of ‘life’ extended into a larger setting of the ecosystem.
There is an informative glossary, end notes, and a selected bibliography at the end of the book.
I end this book review with two excerpts from two recent articles in The Atlantic:
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The Debate That American Conservationists Should Be Having
What if the U.S. protected ecosystems directly? by Emma Marris - May 25, 2025
Marris wrote: “Habitat destruction has been the most common threat to endangered species in the U.S. since 1975.” Marris proposes the conservationists have focused too much on the “tree” (species) and not the “forest” (ecosystems). And with that kind of focus, that may impact the habitat needed for the larger scope of biodiversity. -
“A New Concept for Fighting Climate Change: A growing number of climate activists are taking up a fresh idea as a rallying cry and a legal strategy: Nature, in all its manifestations, is alive.” by Elizabeth Rush - May 26, 2025. {which is a book review of Is A River Alive ?}
“Unlearning our obsession with Cartesian thinking demands humility, a willingness to let the lines blur between us and that great plane of existence that we have learned to label as “it.” Is a River Alive? illustrates what resistance to extraction can look like on the ground, and also what might be awakened in us when we begin to live with rivers, recognizing them as co-creators of our past, our present, and—more and more—our future.”