Is a river alive? Robert Macfarlane sat down with Emergence Magazine to talk about his upcoming book and how we can reimagine our relationship to, and understanding of, water. I take the opportunity to “who rivers” all the way through: “the river who flows; the river who runs; the river who reaches the sea”—not which. And English is a language of “it”-ing, of objectifying. In French, as you’ll know very well, it’s la rivière or la fluve qui coule—who—so they have the “who” present, but we don’t. And I also kind of scratched my head very early on: I suddenly realized that “to river” is not a verb in English. But what could be more of a verb than a river?
Posted: May 24, 2025