Drinkable Rivers How the River Became My Teacher

About this book

As a young child in a densely populated Dutch suburb of Rotterdam, Li An Phoa is amazed by the wilderness around the house – the moss between the pavement tiles and the herons in the ditches. As a twenty-something, she ventures into the real wilderness for the first time. On a canoe trip through the Canadian Subarctic, she discovers that she can drink from the river. But when she returns three years later, she can no longer do so: the river is polluted, the ecosystem disturbed. That experience stays with her. Ever since, Phoa has been drawing attention to drinkable rivers and urging people to take action.

In Drinkable Rivers – a rich tapestry of travelogue, memoir, reportage, philosophical musings, and poetry – Li An Phoa takes the reader on her adventures along rivers on four continents. On foot, she covers over 15,000 kilometres and experiences the deep interconnectedness of all living things. She encounters bears, rattlesnakes and dragonflies and speaks with farmers, writers and ecologists. With her original perspective and disarming approach, she continuously asks the question: how can our rivers become drinkable again?

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