Is a River Alive?

This book didn’t convince me the answer was yes - but I’m also on the fence how much it actually wanted to.

I’ve enjoyed MacFarlane’s other books, The Old Ways and Underland had a compelling core of mysterious routes both near and far.

The journey was similar too, luxurious and lyrical prose, often truly beautiful. In past summers I walked through hills with this playing in my ears and drank it in.

This time however, the same texture seemed to come thick, and fast. After an hour I felt a bit overfaced. Poetically overstimulated, slathered with saccharine prose and on some literary crash.

I want to blame this book for not really being about rivers. But then I’m not sure his other books are really about their title subject either. Like those, these are about his friends, journeys, engagement with the natural world. Once again here we have a broad cast.

This time, however, it fell flat. MacFarlane has some truly great friendships here, and showers them in loving words. But, he’s just more into his own friends than I am.

Less gripped by the core conceit it felt more like we were going through his holiday slides in some detail.

The book touches on how we might consider and value the inanimate world, with a laudable urgency and impatience. It briefly, but interestingly covers various movements around the world to have these thoughts encounter legal systems.

But ultimately I wasn’t convinced a river is alive.

Yes, we live in a disenchanted world. One that would be alien to our ancestors and misses a great deal in its poverty of attention.

But I’m not convinced the answer lies in a spiritual attempt at re-enchantment. I suspect there are better ways through our present to understand the full scope of a river and the life it supports. One that would also see a retreat from mere-resource. I fear a mask of Spirit, God, Ancestor or family might hide as much as it reveals.