What does (slow) water want? Most humans seem to have forgotten.

Erica Gies is an independent journalist who covers science and the environment from Victoria, British Columbia, and San Francisco, California. Her work appears in The New York Times , Scientific American and National Geographic , among others. She is the author of Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge (2022).

Walking across spongy tundra, among bonsai shrubs on fire with autumn colours, I came upon a river too wide to cross. Gazing up the valley from which it flowed, I saw that the obstacle blocking my path was just one strand of a broad, braided system spread languidly across a floodplain in Denali National Park in Alaska. I watched the McKinley River’s fluid columns shift apart, then twine together. Although at that time I knew little about hydrology, the science of water, on some instinctual level I understood that this was a free river. Every other river I’d known was markedly subdued.

What does it mean for a river to be free? Today, most water is not in its natural state, especially in industrialised countries. It sounds obvious, but I hadn’t before given it much thought. Humans have filled in or drained 87 per cent […]

Full article and “slow water”: What does water want? Most humans seem to have forgotten