Fluviophile

Enough of this lecture on hydrography by a mere fluviophile. Is it because I was born on a river bank — the Potomac — of river valley ancestors — the Hudson — and grew up in Southern California in the halcyon years when the rivers ran wild in spring and spread over the plain; is it because of this conditioning, as well as by fondness for the rivers of Europe — the Seine, Rhone, Var, Arno, Tiber, Tagus, Tyne, and Thames, that I have come to love rivers more than any other form of water?

Now I am a fluviophile, planning a book on Arizona in terms of its river systems.

“I work for the state,” I said, thinking I’d tell him I write occasionally for Arizona Highways. He laughed. “The state cuts no ice up here. We’re the Salt River Project.” I tried again. “I’m a fluviophile,” I explained. “You’re a what?” “A fluviophile. A lover of rivers.” “I’ll be damned! That’s a new one.” I played my last card. “I know Rod McMullin,” I said, naming the manager of the Salt River Project.

An extreme example of the southern European rivers is Albania’s Semani River (a name perhaps recognized only by the most fervent fluviophile).

This is a book for fluviophiles, which is to say that this is a book for me.

A self-confessed ‘fluviophile’, David Aaronovich in the Times found the book ‘instructive and entertaining on the subject of riparian disasters, natural and man-made.’