Arts and Entertainment

Authors on Stage features Robert Macfarlane and his new book, ‘Is a River Alive?’

May 22, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

There is no verb for river in English.

British author, naturalist and literary critic, Robert Macfarlane is coming to Theatre Orangeville on May 28 to ask the question, is a river alive? He is set to discuss his new book on the matter, defending his young son’s assertion that -”duh!” meaning “of course a river is alive” with interviewer, Bernadette Hardaker. 

A Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Macfarlane has written 54 books on an impressive range of subjects but he admits that “Is a River Alive?” is his most personal book.

This would be a much shorter book than its actual 800 pages if his son’s monosyllabic declaration was accepted as true. Sadly, the industries we have indulged and promoted throughout our existence, as the most harmful influence on all that is natural, say “no” to the question about rivers being alive.

Is a River Alive? begins with an intensely lyrical history from 12,000 years ago about the steam poking through a chalk base that in due course becomes a river. Historical highlights are equated to the progress and welfare of the stream as a river until coming up to the present day when it was buried and lost for ages until a man – Macfarlane himself – began to dig for and find them, those chalk springs.

The story births the whole of the rest and the reader is captivated and reads on.

Only just now released for purchase, Is a River Alive? takes us on Macfarlane’s trips to three tremendous stories, equally of three rivers and three characters associated with them

Each of these people has suffered damaging personal histories; each is looking to the rivers for healing, while they, themselves look to protect the rivers.

The first leg of Macfarlane’s journey is to Los Cedros River in Ecuador: in 2008, Ecuador amended its constitution to acknowledge “The Rights of Nature” granting ecosystems the right to exist, persist, evolve, and regenerate.

As Macfarlane’s book relates, the ruling halted a Canadian gold mining operation ready to begin digging open mines and destroy the river, at the very last moment. That story ends with a river that “still runs clear.” Added to this marvellous tale is the introduction of Giuliana Furci, a mycologist whom Macfarlane meets and explains what is amazing about her.

It seems there are many miracles in this book. 

The Adyar River in southern India is Macfarlane’s next port of call. There he meets Yuvan Aves, a scientist activist and environmental leader in the area of the Bay of Bengal. Macfarlane travels there to learn about the efforts Yuvan has been making to grant legal personhood to three regional rivers and water bodies.

The tale of Macfarlane’s time in India is fraught and extremely interesting with how, for industry’s sake, a region created fraud maps or counter-maps of the region in order to make the rivers disappear and how the struggle against that unfolds.

There is more to this critical segment of his voyage about the bravery of a local movement of young people, working extremely hard under severe conditions to save the wildlife at risk and his own brief involvement with their efforts.

Lastly, to Canada’s Mutehekau Shipu (also known as Magpie River). Where he embraces the breathtaking dangers of travelling with Wayne, a geomancer, on the Magpie River. Wayne credits learning what he knows from the river, the insects, and the trees. He is also preoccupied with the recent death of his very dear friend, Paul, something of an ever-present ghost that figures in this part of the adventure.

A proposed and very testing voyage across the lake and down the Magpie River can only begin by following instructions and caveats from a wise woman named Rita.

It is not only the profoundly instructive journeys melded into this one book that invites us to hear the conversation between Macfarlane and Hardaker but also the insights that Macfarlane brings from these experiences of the Rivers he visited and rivers at all – our heritage with them and how deeply they define us.

Now is finally the time when we truly understand: a river is alive.

The Citizen took a few moments with Bernadette Hardaker for her thoughts on Macfarlane’s book, as she is interviewing him at the Theatre Orangeville event on May 28.

“I am a paddler,” Hardaker told the Citizen. “And I have paddled lots of rivers in my life. When I read the book, I loved his descriptions. He is a philosopher – an adventurer with a strong ethical conscience, writing for our unlearning our predisposition to dominate everything, as if everything is here to serve us.”

From reading the book, Hardaker talked about the three systems Macfarlane visits to get the reader in touch that there is a life force in rivers and nature. We see it over and over in writings about nature, as she pointed out, about plant life having much more communication than we understand.

“He is trying to change how we think about nature,” she commented. “Rivers have a force and a voice we don’t understand.”

Inviting us to come to the Author’s Night with Robert Macfarlane, Hardaker offered the challenge: “If you don’t believe a river is alive and find the notion preposterous, you might think differently after reading the book.”

The Author’s Night is at Theatre Orangeville on May 28 at 7 p.m., followed by a catered reception. The proceeds of All Authors on Stage events go to support Theatre Orangeville’s New Play Development Fund.

For tickets, go to www.theatreorangeville.ca or call the box office at 519-938-7584. Tickets are also available at BookLore (121 First Street).

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