“One way to stop seeing trees or rivers or hills only as ‘natural resource’ is to class them as fellow beings – kinfolk. I guess I’m trying to subjectify the universe, because look where objectifying it has gotten us. To subjectify is not necessarily to co-opt, colonize, exploit. Rather it may involve a great reach outward of the mind and imagination. — Ursula K. Le Guin (2017)” Quoted in: Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane, p. 45.
I have read two of the three major parts of this book. At first, I found author Robert Macfarlane too exaggeratedly poetic and pretentious in the way he discussed natural history. I was not convinced by his over-the-top rhetoric about “living” rivers. However, when he came to specifics, about the rivers of Ecuador and about the Ganges River in India, and when I began to understand exactly what he meant by seeing a river die, I found much to interest me. Here is a quotation that illustrates the perspective that I find useful:
“Both the Ganges and the Yamuna have their sources in the glaciers of the Himalayas: the Ganges at the Gaumukh, or snout of the Gangotri Glacier; the Yamuna further west at the Yamunotri Glacier. The Yamuna flows south to Delhi, before bending eastwards through Agra and past the Taj Mahal, to unite with the Ganges – and, supposedly, the mystical underground Saraswati river – in the city of Prayagraj (formerly Allahabad). Until it reaches Delhi the Yamuna is a life-bringing river, who carries in its cold blue waters the memory of its glacial birth. In Delhi, it becomes one of the most polluted waterways in the world. Oxygen content collapses to near zero. About the only life is extremophile bacteria – and the thousands of pilgrims who bathe in the waters of the river each year, believing it will spare them from hell in the afterlife. Many of these water-worshippers emerge from their baptism covered in toxic river-sludge. Further downstream, where the Yamuna flows past the mintcake-white, hyperbolic love-token of the Taj Mahal, its waters are oily-black and rancid. For the Yamuna, as elsewhere in India, holiness does not equal cleanliness.” (p. 190)
In sum, this book held my interest for two of the three parts, and I may return to read the last part. The human dependence on rivers is profound, and ancient, and worth thinking about. I found it strange that the author missed two great writers whose works would be relevant: Langston Hughes (quoted below) and Henry David Thoreau on the world’s watery identity.
I do love seeing rivers!
Rivers I Have Seen
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The Seine, from Evelyn who is in Paris this week. When we lived there for a time,
I walked along the quays many times. |
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| The Huron River last Saturday. |
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| The Mississippi River in 2024. |
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| The Thames River with historic bridges and landmarks, 2016. |
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| The Isis River in Cambridge, England from our trip in 1999. |
Langston Huges: A River Poem
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Blog post © 2025 mae sander
