‘To Imagine That A River Is Alive Causes Water to Glitter Differently’

Robert Macfarlane’s new book, Is A River Alive?, answers a resounding ‘yes’ to the question of its title. In this extract, he explores the limitations of the language we use to describe the natural world

As the living world has been further distanced and deadened into ‘brute matter’, so language use which recognises the liveliness of land and water – a ‘grammar of animacy’, in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s celebrated phrase – has become rarer.

We have largely lost a love language for rivers. Occasionally, these animate grammars can still be heard – and they deliver a jolt to the mind’s ear.

In April 2021, four women from an inter-tribal coalition wrote an open letter to Joe Biden, seeking his protection of their sacred lands of Bears Ears – the desert region in Utah which Donald Trump had sought to open for mining and drilling. The New York Times printed the women’s letter.

“Our histories run deep”, they said. “We relate to these lands who are alive. We know the names of the mountains, plants, and animals who teach us everything we need to know to survive… We know these lands as a mother knows her child, as a child knows her mother. Indigenous women worldwide know where the sacred springs are; where the plants necessary for food and medicines are found; and the animals who instruct us”.