“Days on the water have produced in me the intensifying feeling of somehow growing together with the river: not thinking with it, but being thought by it.” - Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

This episode of Explore was recorded live in May 2025 at the Ottawa International Writers Festival.

Robert Macfarlane’s latest book asks the question: Is a River Alive? To answer it, the award-winning British author, academic and environmentalist spent four-and-a-half years exploring rivers and their watersheds across four continents. His journeys take him from an Ecuadorian cloud forest, where pristine waterways are threatened by Canadian gold mining interests, to Chennai, India, where activists are working to bring dead rivers back to life.

Macfarlane also led a personally transformative kayak expedition down Quebec’s Magpie River, or Muteshekau Shipu, on the territory of the Innu Nation. In 2021, the Magpie became the first river in Canada to be granted legal personhood, a landmark effort to prevent it from being dammed by Hydro-Québec.  

This conversation explores the rights of nature, environmental activism and the interconnectedness of rivers and people. Through his book and this dialogue, Macfarlane underscores the need for a reimagined relationship with nature, emphasizing the importance of rivers as living entities and the hope found in environmental guardianship. It's a great and thought-provoking talk. Enjoy! 

Robert Macfarlane is the bestselling author of the award-winning trilogy on landscape and the human heart: Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, and The Old Ways, as well as Landmarks and Holloway. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages and published in more than 20 countries, and widely adapted for television, film and radio by the BBC among others. Macfarlane has contributed to Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books. In 2012, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and he is currently a Fellow in English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

This episode is one of our annual canoe and paddling series. Next up is former Canadian Geographic editor Dan Rubinstein, who will discuss his epic 2000-kilometre waterboard adventure from Ottawa to Manhattan and back. His new book, Waterborne, details the expedition.