Is a River Alive? Quotes

“A small 'self' suffers and causes suffering, [while] a love of the living world lets single identities and selfhoods expand and encompass other beings, entities and whole landscapes, such that the self becomes a spacious thing.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“The river is time, and we are always
within it -- even when we think we’re standing dry-footed on the bank, watching the current pass.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Hope is the thing with rivers.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“In English there is no verb "to river". But what could be more of a verb than a river?”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Spring becomes stream becomes river, and all three seek the sea.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Our fate flows with that of rivers –– and always has.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“River's song is the song of songs, sung in spirals and stars and roars and other notes beyond hearing...”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Rain-fed, the spring’s stream surges seawards: gravity at work, or something like longing.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Shifting baseline syndrome’ is the name given to the process whereby ongoing damage to the natural world becomes normalized over time, as each new generation measures loss against an already degraded benchmark.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“History runs both fleet and slow, eddying back upon itself to shape spirals where flow meets counterflow. Life and death rise and fall – and the spring, as it has always done, organizes existence around itself, exerting something like will upon the land.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Ideas move in space and time. They swim like fish. They drift like pollen. They migrate like birds. Sometimes their movement carries them right around the world, and they find new niches in which to flourish.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“In Orange County, Florida (Seminole Territory), for instance, the rights of Lake Mary Jane have been asserted. The White Earth Band of Ojibwe has campaigned for the rights of manoomin (wild rice); the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe has successfully fought for the recognition of the rights of Tsuladxw (Pacific salmon); and a major campaign to recognize the rights of the ecologically stricken Great Salt Lake was under way until the Utah State Legislature, rattled by the campaign, passed a House bill prohibiting the granting of legal personhood to any natural entities.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Meaning, as well as water, can be impounded: can still and settle behind dam walls of thought.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“The ghosts of rivers lie all about us.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“A hypothesis: Earth and River are both gods made of
time, but even Earth has cause to fear River.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Rivers are easily wounded, but given a chance they heal themselves with remarkable speed. Their life *pours* back.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Muscular, wilful, worshipped and mistreated, rivers have long existed in the threshold space between geology and theology. They give us metaphors to live by, and they decline our attempts to parse them. Unruly, fluid and utterly other, rivers are – I have found – potent presences with which to imagine water differently. We will never think like a river, but perhaps we can think with them.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“The ‘legal personality’ concept aligns with the Māori legal concept of a personified natural world. By regarding the river as having its own standing, the mana (authority) and mauri (life force) of the river would be more likely to be regarded as a holistic being, rather than a fragmented entity of flowing water, river-bed and river-bank.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“If fungi were to speak,’ says Giuliana, ‘they would tell us what they show us, which is that really the death of an organism is the beginning of countless others; that there is no end to life, just a constantly shifting substrate.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“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)”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Grammar’ is that which orders the relations between things. The word sounds dry, but it hides great power within itself: in Middle English, ‘grammar’ also meant ‘magic’ – a ‘gramarye’ was a book of spells or sorcery. A good grammar of animacy can still re-enchant existence. To imagine that a river is alive causes water to glitter differently. New possibilities of encounter emerge – and loneliness retreats a step or two. You find yourself falling in love outward, to use Robinson Jeffers’s beautiful phrase.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“It is normalized that a corporation, in the eyes of the law, is an entity with legal standing and a suite of rights, including the right to sue – but that a river who has flowed for thousands of years has no rights at all.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Meaning, as well as water, can be impounded: can still and settle behind dam walls of thought. The impounded meaning of ‘river’ is now one of ‘service provider’, an identity held in place by structures of the imagination as well as of the land. We have become increasingly waterproofed: conceptually sealed against subtle and various relations with rivers, even as they continue to irrigate our bodies, thoughts, songs and stories. Rivers run through people as surely as they run through places.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“The Three Gorges dam project on the Yangtze River in China impounded so much water that it has measurably slowed the rotation of the Earth.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Water flows in and through us. Running, we are rivers. Seated, we are pools. Our brains and hearts are three-quarters water, our skin is two-thirds water; even our bones are watery. We were swimmers before we were walkers, slow-turning like breath-divers in the dark flotation tank of the womb.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Most of us, I think, once felt rivers to be alive. Young children are natural explorers of the vivid in its old sense: from the Latin vividus, meaning ‘spirited, lively, full of life’. Young children instinctively inhabit and respond to a teeming world of talkative trees, singing rivers and thoughtful mountains.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“To be silenced is not the same as to be silent; to go unheard is not the same as to be speechless. No landscape speaks with a single tongue.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“The water of each spring and stream is not interchangeable. Water’s source matters. Its course matters. Each river is differently spirited and differently tongued – and so must be differently honoured.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Alles op aarde beschikt over een geest en een leven, of het nu bezield is of niet. Die geest is kenmerkend voor die resolutie.
Ross Montour, zoals geciteerd door Robert Macfarlane”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“In English, there is no verb ‘to river’. But what could be more of a verb than a river?”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?