Exploring the Living Spirit of Rivers: Robert Macfarlane’s Reflective Journey

Upon encountering the title of Robert Macfarlane’s latest book, "Is a River Alive?", one might wonder if the question is merely rhetorical. Would the acclaimed British nature writer really produce a work concluding with a simple “No”? As one of Macfarlane’s young sons remarked, “Well, that’s going to be a short book then, Dad, because the answer is yes!”

Yet Macfarlane reveals that he began his river explorations with uncertainty. In the book’s opening, he confesses, “I began these river-journeys in doubt and uncertainty. I knew the question that drives this book’s title to be challenging, even as I hoped for an answer as straightforward as my son imagined.”

He argues that accepting the idea of a river as a living entity “changes the world” by altering our perspective. If nature is alive, it invites a more imaginative empathy. Macfarlane deliberately avoids impersonal pronouns like “that” or “which” when referring to natural features, preferring to describe rivers as beings that flow and forests as entities that grow.

The narrative follows Macfarlane through three distinct environments: an Ecuadorian cloud forest, a network of contaminated waterways in Chennai, India, and the Mutehekau Shipu river—known to the Innu people—located about 600 miles northeast of Montreal. His experiences range from wading beneath waterfalls, nearly swept against rocks by strong currents, to quietly weeping in the sand after carefully burying endangered sea turtle eggs. These encounters culminate in a profound transformation, as he reflects, “Days on the water have brought about a growing sense of unity with the river: not thinking alongside it, but being thought by it.”

Macfarlane’s prose is richly evocative, often lush and poetic. However, his moments of revelation sometimes verge on the overly solemn or sentimental, which may challenge some readers’ patience. His observational passages are original, fluid, and striking, yet when immersed in introspective musings, the writing occasionally becomes expansive and emotionally charged.

Unlike the subterranean realms explored in his earlier work, "Underland," the river as a subject naturally invites grander reflections. Macfarlane opens with a mythic tone, recounting the 12,000-year history of a spring-fed chalk stream near his home in Cambridge. Here, he introduces a younger version of himself as “the boy with flaxen hair,” setting a contemplative and personal frame for the journey ahead.