Is A River Alive?

 I think the answer is definitely "Yes!", after listening to Robert Macfarlane talk yesterQday afternoon.  I'd bought the ticket before I'd had any idea I'd be moving house, and I wasn't going to waste it.

Rob Macfarlane was being interviewed by Horatio Clare, who is very good at interviewing - and it helps that they are already friends.  The new book - Is A River Alive? - is his most personal yet, and he spent five years travelling around the world to write it, featuring rivers in Ecuador,  Quebec and Chinnai in India (which used to be Madras, when it was famed for its rivers).  

He started off by introducing a third entity on stage - he had spent the morning at the Warren, and brought back a flask of Wye water.  He spoke quite a bit about the Wye, including the information that there is a new post in Herefordshire Council specifically to be the Voice of the Wye, so that the needs of the river are represented at an official level.  Given the sad state of the river (it's not so long ago that you could paddle without slipping on slimy green weed at the Warren), this is much needed.

He also talked about chalk streams, in the south of England where he lives, and the desperate state they are in.

But he also mentioned signs of hope - a river system in the Pacific North West of America which was dammed in the 1920s has recently had the last dam removed - and the salmon are already coming back to spawn there, in what was once one of the most important salmon rivers on that coast.