Rivers have always shaped the way we live: where we settle, how we grow food, even how we play. The Boise River is no different. It runs right through the heart of our community, giving us drinking water, summer floats, shady parks, and so much more.

Today’s story was written by Amanda Patchin, who takes us on a thoughtful exploration of what it means to care for the Boise River as if it were a living part of our community. Enjoy!

PS - we have a new giveaway item for Reader Rewards: Lost Grove Brewing gift cards! See more info at the bottom of this newsletter.

Is the Boise River Alive?

By Amanda Patchin

I recently read Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive – an extended meditation on the nature of water systems and personhood – and it stimulated in me a desire to think about, attend to, and understand our Boise River more.

Macfarlane’s question is simple but demands a complex answer: if a river is alive, how would we know how to treat it?

The River’s Place in Our Lives

Macfarlane writes of rivers in Canada, Ecuador, and India. The Los Cedros in Ecuador is an occasion for considering the legal rights of nature. The Kosasthalaiyar, Cooum, and Adyar river system in Chennai, India is an occasion for considering the impact of use and pollution on rivers as well as people. And, the Mutehekau Shipu in Quebec is the occasion for considering rivers as competing resources: power (as in electricity) and power as in the natural engine of a living ecosystem.

But today the Boise River is our focus. From early irrigation and orchards to today’s Greenbelt and parks, the river has always been at the heart of Boise.

Once treated as a dumping ground, the river is now a source of drinking water, irrigation, recreation, and hydroelectric power. It’s not a new acquaintance but a family member we already rely on – and that relies on us.

The River as a Living System

The Boise begins way up in the mountains, fed by a 4,000-square-mile watershed. Springs and snow melt feed each of the three main forks as they wind their way west toward us and toward their union with the Snake River. Forests, soils, and slopes filter and direct water into aquifers that sustain southern Idaho. What happens upstream – pollution, mining, forest fires – becomes part of the river’s “body.”

That body includes not just water but also the fish and crawdads that inhabit its waters, as well as the cottonwoods, currant bushes, willows, milkweed, blackberry brambles, and even poison ivy that root themselves along its banks. It's also the osprey, owls, cooper’s hawks, bald eagles, kingfishers, and herons that are nourished by and nourish the life of the river. The mink and beaver that burrow and feed are part of the Boise as are the millions of insects that flit about to be eaten by bullbats (common nighthawk) and actual bats. It's the mice and gophers, snakes and skunks. It even includes the Boiseans floating, swimming, jumping and walking along and in the river.

To see the river as alive is to see all of this as interconnected life.

How We Care for our River

When it comes to caring for the Boise River as though it might be “alive” there is actually quite a lot that an ordinary citizen can do to respect it. We can consider things like:

• Keep trash, clippings, and chemicals out of street drains.
• Minimize lawn treatments and chemicals that could run into those street drains.
• Consider creating rain gardens on your property to encourage water to infiltrate the soil.
• Think of your yard as an ecosystem, not just a patch of grass.

Your HOA might not like it, but lawns with clover, mulch, flowering plants, and compost can turn yards into thriving habitats that benefit the river, aquifer, and wildlife.

Dams along the Boise

The dams on the Boise are worth considering. As they exist now they control flooding, provide irrigation water, and create recreation areas. I do not think there are currently any major advocates of removal on the Boise, although some rivers in the US are getting the full restoration treatment, but it might be helpful to reflect on what might have been.

After the development of the atomic bomb in the 1940s, the US developed a program to find peaceful uses for nuclear capability. “Project Plowshare” (a reference to Isaiah 2:4), looked for ways to use nuclear explosives for construction projects and a dam was proposed at Twin Springs (roughly between Idaho City and Atlanta) with a nuclear bomb to create a giant landslide to block water flows. Thankfully, this idea was abandoned in 1968 due to concerns about nuclear contamination. However, I think it would be healthy to consider other possible negative effects of such a project and the sheer number of unpredictable and uncontrollable side effects of action in the world.

Wisdom and Responsibility

I said before that Boiseans floating the river, walking along the Greenbelt, or drinking from the waters are part of the ecosystem of the Boise. I do firmly believe that.

We are part of this world and not a parasite upon it. We are a unique animal – homo sapiens – capable of wisdom and thus, capable of unwisdom.

Wise action is so much harder than we are usually ready to admit. Wisdom requires deep awareness, long observation, careful parsing, and above all a willingness to consider errors and the hard work of undoing harmful or ill-considered action. Dams make water more available for agriculture and control flooding, but they also alter the habitat of aquatic life, disrupt wildlife grazing patterns, and accumulate silt which will either defeat the dam one day or deoxygenate water downstream if it is released.

Like our lawns and our farming practices, dams can remind us to consider our place in the ecosystem. Consideration of all these things ought to make us reckon with the consequences of our actions beyond our immediate desires and needs. We need drinking water and food. We need shelter. We want pretty homes and for our neighbors to admire our yard. We want a little adventure this weekend, laughing and floating on the water in the heat. We want places to go camping.

But let us all also, alongside our personal concerns, attend to the lives of the kingfishers and crawdads, the willow trees and brown trout, the fungal structures nourishing the soil and the mayflies cavorting at stream’s edge.

Let us also cultivate a general sense that the river is alive, and an important member within our human community. What specific actions we advocate may vary, but let us care for the Boise River as much as we can.

Thanks for reading!

With love from Boise,

Marissa

​

​

​​​

​