Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry Robert Macfarlane : Is a River Alive?
Jun 27, 2025
In a captivating conversation, Robert Macfarlane, renowned for his explorations of nature and landscape, dives into the vibrant life of rivers and our relationship with the environment. He discusses the concept of rivers as living entities, drawing connections between ancient texts like the Epic of Gilgamesh and contemporary ecological thoughts. Macfarlane emphasizes the importance of language in reshaping our perspectives towards nature, advocating for a deeper kinship with the non-human world. His insights inspire a profound reflection on environmental stewardship and the power of storytelling.
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Words Create Worlds
- Words can function performatively, changing worldviews by their utterance.
- Saying a river is alive ontologically shifts perception beyond metaphor to lived reality.
Grammar Enchants Existence
- Grammar encodes ideology and can objectify or animate the world.
- Using a grammar of animacy counters estrangement and re-enchants existence.
Rivers as Living Relations
- Anthropomorphism can reveal interspecies kinship when fluidly understood.
- Rivers uniquely embody process ontology, connecting life through story and relation.
