Matt Bear-Fowler

“The Three Gorges dam project on the Yangtze River in China impounded so much water that it has measurably slowed the rotation of the Earth.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Grammar’ is that which orders the relations between things. The word sounds dry, but it hides great power within itself: in Middle English, ‘grammar’ also meant ‘magic’ – a ‘gramarye’ was a book of spells or sorcery. A good grammar of animacy can still re-enchant existence. To imagine that a river is alive causes water to glitter differently. New possibilities of encounter emerge – and loneliness retreats a step or two. You find yourself falling in love outward, to use Robinson Jeffers’s beautiful phrase.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Water flows in and through us. Running, we are rivers. Seated, we are pools. Our brains and hearts are three-quarters water, our skin is two-thirds water; even our bones are watery. We were swimmers before we were walkers, slow-turning like breath-divers in the dark flotation tank of the womb.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Most of us, I think, once felt rivers to be alive. Young children are natural explorers of the vivid in its old sense: from the Latin vividus, meaning ‘spirited, lively, full of life’. Young children instinctively inhabit and respond to a teeming world of talkative trees, singing rivers and thoughtful mountains.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?