Book Review: Nine Ways to Cross a River

When summer wraps its arms around you, fully embracing you physically and mentally, you feel lithe but slightly languid, creative but not particularly productive. The days could go on forever, as far as you are concerned. This is how it feels to read Nine Ways to Cross a River by Akiko Busch. It could continue as an eternal narrative and we'd be perfectly contented. Only when the last page is turned are we reluctantly reminded that seasons change, work beckons and we'd better snap out of it.

Busch writes about swimming across eight American rivers, from the Hudson (twice) to the Mississippi. These are not Olympian feats, these are leisurely excursions designed to get to know the rivers. The bodies of water are not attacked and conquered, they are caressed, observed, appreciated and even tasted. Busch's approach to swimming is Zen-like. "It is one of those sports that can be practiced with something close to indolence. It is not about speed or distance or progress. Certainly it can be about these things," she says. "I wouldn't imagine it the foundation of a whole philosophy, yet there is something about swimming, possibly because it requires a committed partnership between breathing and moving, that affirms one's sense of interior order."

Traveling with Busch, we learn the distinct personalities of each of these rivers in history, geography, geology, commerce and ecology. We learn about currents, erosion, pollution and renewal. Some flow north, some obey the tides, some have snakes, some have shipwrecks on their bed. Primarily, we learn why people are drawn to their rivers, whether it is to camp, fish, boat, bird watch or simply float downstream in a rubber inner tube.

Busch is the ideal guide; part naturalist, part storyteller, part philosopher. She writes, "I have begun to think that those of us who derive comfort from rivers do so because, in one way or another, all rivers are about carving out space. They are about ice and water and the force these gather in trying to find their way. Some do it voraciously and with aggression; others do it with a simpler persistence. It can take seconds or centuries, but all rivers are about making a place for themselves. We are after the same thing, trying as well to find some place on this earth that makes us feel as though we belong there, some crevice or path or course, some sense of give in the earth and rock that will allow us to pass through."

Nine Ways To Cross A River
By Akiko Busch
Bloomsbury, 224 pages, $19.95