What Is a River?
Is this a picture of a river? No! This is just a channel of water pinned in by earthen banks, not a River.
My channel is just one part of my being, where my waters travel most often. I make my own river bed, within my channel my flowing water sculpts the ground, washing away the earth, exposing rocks, smoothing stones into the rounded pebbles you love.
My movements create a channel between earthen walls, but my waters do not flow straight down the middle of this channel, I swirl and dance from bank to bank, ever moving, ever changing. My waters carve the earth at their edges, I carry the particles and stones within me for a while. When I flow straight, my waters slow and I let go of what I carry.
The particles float down and create sandy or pebbly beaches for birds to nest on and fish to lay their eggs within (1).
As these sandbanks grow larger, my waters must curve around them, so I begin to push against the opposite bank, creating new curves, carrying new earthy material into my waters (2).
In places, so much accumulates that my curving path is closed (3), and I create a wetland, a beautiful ox bow lake, paradise for fish and insects (4). Most often the particles I drop grow into sand bars (6) and promontories (7).
As as they grow, I move around them, carving the opposite bank, carrying new material. These particles I carry, until again, as I slow, I drop them. Over and over, I carve and carry, carry and carve.
My flow is the dance of earth and water, twisting and turning. I am never still, never straight.
The earth decides how I shape her, where she is soft my banks are steep and concave, home to Sand martins and otters. Where she is hard and rocky I flow straight and deep, carving gorges, home to Peregrines and wild woodlands. Next to my bed is my floodplain (5), this is where I flow when my waters are abundant.
My natural floods are different from the frightening floods you know, the floods which ruin your homes and businesses – those are not of my choosing. When I spread across my natural areas, my waters nourish the landscape and water is stored within it to prevent droughts.
My natural floods creates refuges for fish, which grow faster in my warm, rich and shallow waters above my floodplain meadows. Tiny particles floating within me settle down and build rich soils, which support many plants and store carbon. My waters are a rich blessing when they spread naturally within my river body.
Natural rivers take their time, we meander. Our journey, from rain, to river, to ocean, to rain again, brings life to the land.
We require freedom to be what we are. Without freedom to be a river with our wetland habitats intact, when our waters are piped off the fields and mountains by field drains, when our river beds are deepened and our banks are raised, we are cut off from our floodplain and forced to act like a drain, not a river.
Then we have nowhere to go - our waters are squeezed into an impossibly small and narrow channel - so we flood out over the land into towns and homes. It is not our real way of being, these floods are not natural - they are caused by those who refuse to make space for water.
