“Is a River Alive?”

“Is a River Alive?” By Robert Macfarlane

a Carolina Paddler Book Report

by Jeff Hatcher

W.W. Norton & Company, 2025, 384 pages

∞ I was on a call with some friends not long ago and one of them announced “the Noli is a dead river now.” I wondered how they could say that – the Nolichucky still has water, rapids and fish. It didn’t get poisoned so nothing can live in it. The rapids are different but just because some of them are new does that mean the river is gone? Is it dead because it is different? Because it is not what we want it to be?

Robert Macfarlane takes on the idea of what makes a river alive. His writing is beautiful and easy to read.

The story is told through the journey of three river systems, the people who depend on the rivers and the people who protect them.

The first is in Ecuador, the Los Cedros. When Ecuador wrote a new constitution in 2007, the government included a section on the “Rights of Nature.” By doing this, the river was granted rights and protection. This section of the book deals with how these rights were won and how the Rights of Nature Movement was born. Macfarlane documents his travels close to the river’s source, accompanied by some of the people who made the movement happen.

The second river system is in Chennai, India. The rivers Adyar and Cooum feed the city and are currently “unfit for any life form as there is no dissolved oxygen.” They contain “disastrously high levels of heavy metal concentrations, fecal matter and coliform bacteria.” This section of the book is a wonderful exploration of rivers and creeks before they reach Chennai. How they are transformed as they near the urban center. Despite this, even in some of the heavily populated areas where the rivers join the Bay of Bengal, life has managed to find a way to survive in and around the river.

Lastly, he travels to Canada to look at the Mutehekau Shipu river. The Hydro Quebec utility has plans to industrialize the area and build dams on the river. Macfarlane is joined by several friends as they travel the river source to sea. The trip is full of what you might expect – Native American advice on their spiritual journey, rain and head winds on the lake and big rapids (!) on the river.  The backdrop of all this is the attempt to apply “Rights of Nature” in the face of industrial development.

Sometimes as I am heading down a river or sitting in an eddy, the water moves my boat in ways I would never expect. I sense an odd eddy line or boil, or even something I didn’t see. I wonder what makes the river and the water move like this when it doesn’t appear to make sense. This feels like the river is “alive.”

Maybe there is more to it than just feeling alive; we need to recognize and give back to our rivers.