Welcome back to our ‘Reading Rivers’ series, where we explore how our waterways inspire the written word. Today we’re looking at The Flow: Rivers, Water and Wildness by Amy-Jane Beer. First published in 2022, the book documents Beer’s exploration of rivers across England, Wales, and Scotland, including two “blissfully cool” chalk streams. The well-deserved winner of the 2023 Wainwright Prize, this book draws on Beer’s extensive experience as a naturalist, campaigner, and nature writer.
When we first join Beer, she is walking to a gorge on the River Rawthey. A new electric fence blocks her path, and birds call warnings that are drowned out by the roar of the water. We learn that this is where her close friend Kate, who “had a heart like the rising sun”, died in a kayaking accident seven years earlier. This visit is the first step on a journey to reconnect with rivers – and to better understand their intricacies – in the wake of this immense personal tragedy.
Beer’s training is in biology, and she views the world through this expert lens. In her renderings, the landscapes teem with kingfishers, sedge warblers, tansy, willowherb, and cow parsley. There are musings about the hearing abilities of fish and the physiology of colour perception. There is also some fantastic imagery: the “exquisitely tooled chainmail” of a brown trout, the “fastidious feathery origami” of a heron, and moss that climbs trees “like saggy green legwarmers”. Ecological knowledge blends with wonder, as she imagines the water whispering to her.
Idyllic as these scenes may be, Beer deftly confronts the darker side of the picture. For every beautiful river, there is another that chokes on wet wipes and shopping bags. We see how abstraction and climate change have depleted their flow; how farm runoff and sewage pollution have filled them with algae. Culverts and concrete channels have cleaved them from the land and hidden them from sunlight. While floods are on the rise, eels are dwindling to near extinction. Somewhere along the way, the “old bargain” of give and take has been forgotten.
We have allowed this to go on for so long, Beer theorises, because messiness is inherently uncomfortable. But tidiness, for all the perceived control it offers, is alien to the joyful anarchy of nature. Ancient paleochannels show rivers branching like blood vessels and wiggling over the ground like snakes. Our nervousness about the return of beavers is due, in part, to our wish for water to be manageable and predictable. Reversing the damage means loosening our grip and embracing the potential for “essential chaos” that follows.
This is especially important, Beer implies, because humanity is a relatively small part of a much bigger picture. The water that sustains and surrounds us has a history longer than we can fathom. Rivers may be “all intent, all progress”, but the water itself has no destination, “only spaces and forms it passes through, and occasional organic or mineral partners, any of which might sit out the dance for a matter of hours or billions of years”. As a tree crumbles from decay, and a bat snatches a moth from the air, matter is transformed and the cycle continues.
Such a mindset can be hard to adopt, as Beer herself acknowledges. Early in the book, she struggles with the idea that the river where Kate died has continued to flow in her absence – that despite her significance in the lives of those who loved her, the water simply moved along. In time, though, Beer comes to feel that loss is a crucial part of life’s preciousness, because knowing its brevity reminds us to cherish it. Far from being a sombre read, this ultimately becomes a story of renewal; a hopeful reflection on our place within the incredible vitality around us.
Overall, this book is a poignant exploration of what rivers can teach us about the complexities of nature and the human condition. You can borrow printed and e-book copies from your local Hampshire library, so grab your free library card today! If you love reading about rivers, check out our other book reviews or read personal stories that local people have shared through the Tales from the Riverbank project.