Richard Nairn tracked the full length of the Avonmore river, from its source to the sea, and writes in his new book about how visionary individuals can change the narrative from exploitation to restoration.
When I stand beside the clear bubbling water of the river that flows through our farm in Co Wicklow, I look up to the hill where it rises, a rocky summit covered in heather and gorse. Here the water trickles from springs and boggy hollows to coalesce in several small streams that eventually form a single channel. Generations of local farmers used the river to water their livestock and drained their wetter fields to ensure that the water ran more quickly down the slope.
In times of heavy rainfall, the river becomes a raging torrent, carrying brown peaty water off the hill, down the valley and through the village. The debris of fallen branches and leaves is washed downstream, gravel beds are washed clean of silt and the floods allow trout and salmon to move upstream to their traditional spawning grounds. It is likely that the river has been running here, just like this, since the last glaciers retreated many thousands of years ago. As Karine Polwart sang, ”while kingdoms come and kingdoms go, rivers run and rivers flow”.
Read the full article on The Irish Times website.
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