The Economic Collapse

Urban Rivers: 

If you are a deep-city-dweller, you may think you don’t have a river near you, but there is a high chance you do—you may just not be able to see it! This touching short film by freshwater activist relates her quest to find Garrison Creek and Mud Creek beneath the streets and sidewalks of modern Toronto. GPS maps and city survey maps can help you trace the course of the streams, brooks, and creeks near you, and following those courses can be a beautiful and educational, sometimes poignant, urban safari. (P.S. As a favor to the river, make sure you bring a bag with you when you go, so you can pack out trash that you find!)

Wildswimming:

is a movement/activity that is taking hold in Great Britain to start with, inspired by the late naturalist Roger Deakin, who sought to understand his native island by swimming in all its wild waterways and water bodies. He documented his sometimes chilly, sometimes outlaw adventures in the book . Have you ever seen a body of water and thought, ‘I sure would like to get in that?’ Well, with wild swimming, you do. 

Wildswimming is a subversive activity, that takes you off the pre-interpreted track of things, and puts you in intimate contact with wild nature… with water, especially the life beneath the surface: reeds, fish, invertebrates. It is a way of immersing yourself directly in the element that directly sustains your life. So: don’t be reckless, and don’t get yourself shot, but get in. 

River Maiden in the Nanay Floodplain.

Find A Spring: 

Have you ever had a drink of fresh, pure water, bubbling right out of the earth? The community-contributed website  helps you locate active, healthy springs near you, wherever on the face of the planet you may find yourself. Contributors give directions to local springs, and also information about their accessibility. When I visited True Blessing Spring in Monson, Massachusetts, I met a young couple filling up their water containers who had found the spring in exactly the same way I did, and now made it their weekly ritual to come get all their drinking water there. So make a day of it: map it, and enjoy a road trip to a new and unknown place in quest for water. And bring your water bottle! Drink local!

River Culture: 

Ever since hearing one of their transcendent, spirited concerts, I have been in love with , a collaborative collective of musicians from all the countries along the course of the Nile (Q: Can you name all the countries?). Despite the performers being from different nations, the pulse of the river threads through all of their music—all of these diverse cultures united by one great waterway:

On the waters of another great river, National Geographic photographer David Guttenfelder documented his in Southeast Asia in .

From the Mississippi, to the Amazon, to the Ganges, to the Hudson, so many cultures have arisen around rivers. Understanding our native waterway helps us understand our origins, an inextricable part of who we are. It runs in our bloodstream and in the lines of our imagination. We are part of our land-and-waterscapes, past, present, and future.

So find the water near you, and listen to its song! Happy summer!

The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spellbound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea. ~ Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows