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.
Macfarlane’s touch is deft, giving us exactly enough to consider the question while also showing us how this is not just about rivers but about us ... Macfarlane’s writing is as beautiful as the rivers and the hope he’s describing.
Perhaps the most moving and beautiful part of his book comes in the interludes between visits to faraway rivers in which Macfarlane tells the history of a small spring near his home ... If we’re lucky, we do not have to go far to find a stream or river to sit by. The revelations in this passionate book will make that quiet, common experience even more life-giving.
Macfarlane is justifiably known for lush, evocative prose. But his epiphanies can be so portentous that I started to feel restless, even amid so many gorgeous Macfarlanian sentences. When he observes what he sees, his descriptions are original, sinuous and often startling; when he’s in thrall to a reverie, his descriptions get windy and sentimental ... Macfarlane weaves in plenty of factual information, including vivid passages on the biodiversity of cloud forests and the destruction caused by metal mining. But his method of persuasion isn’t primarily scientific; it’s affective and moral ... There is so much solemn virtue packed into this book I was grateful for the occasional bits of human comedy.
