Riverwalking: Reflections on Moving Water by Kathleen Dean Moore
My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
Kathleen Moore takes the reader with her to 20 different rivers, creeks and streams. Each river is the title for an essay. Most of the essays follow the pattern of personal narrative interspersed with philosophical, geological, piscatorial, ethical, etc. discussions. The segues from narrative to informational usually work quite well. Most of her essays end with a “teaching moment,” or “moral,” although typically not so blatant as to be noticed as such.
As a philosopher (she’s chair of the philosophy department at Oregon State University) she has the mental tools to look at many issues from different points of view. Yet her writing comes across as very down-to-earth, not ivory tower. She is adept at writing about many topics and her knowledge sounds as if it comes from her inherent curiosity, which she then shares with unique insights. For example, in her essay about time, “The Little Stoney River” (which is infused with geology), she compared seismographs to music, especially birdsongs:
“A mountain is movement over time. Seismographs draw the movement of mountains, thick vibrations on lined paper, like chords on a bass clef, but slow, largo. Hard massed lines, then a thin line sketched over time, then pizzicato as a boulder bounces down a cliff. The seismographs look to me like the drawings of birdsongs in the margins of field guides, where time is measured along the horizontal axis, the frequency of vibrations is measured along the vertical axis, and the song itself is a curving line or an ascending scribble. On a sonogram, the liquid whistle-and-warble of the dipper [water ouzel]—tswee, tswee, tsooptsoodle-oop—is two curved lines and a lumpy smudge. If the dipper’s song were inscribed on the horizon, it would trace a lyrical ridgeline: two rounded peaks sloping off to the south and a range of low, curving hilltops.”
Her narrative parts make me wish that I grew up in her family. They make me wish I were a better parent at getting my kids more involved in the outdoors with me. Her family accompanies her on most of her explorations and become an integral part of the narrative as well, such as when the family gets caught in a torrential downpour after crossing an already flooded river and they try to decide how to return (also from “The Little Stoney River”):
“By [my children's] count, the lightning is two and a half [miles] away and coming fast. We pull on raincoats, debate in high-pitched voices about the safest place in a lightning storm, and then run into a grove of willows. Perched on the exposed roots to escape water that rises in the thick dark moss under our feet,we raise our hoods and turn our backs to the wind. Geologic time runs a torrent.”
Moore’s essays are a delight to read!
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