Is a River Alive? by Robert Mcfarlane, Copy#2

Hailed in the New York Times as “a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler,” Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. "Is a River Alive?" is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada—imperiled respectively by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane’s house, a stream who flows through his own years and days. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robert Macfarlane’s best-selling books include "Underland", "The Old Ways", and "Mountains of the Mind". With the artist Jackie Morris he is the coauthor of "The Lost Words", "The Lost Spells", and "The Book of Birds". He is the recipient of the E. M. Forster Prize for Literature and the Henry David Thoreau Prize for Literary Excellence and is a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Robert is one of the featured 2026 Wild Wonder Conference Keynote speakers!