A long story about a short and important river

J

im Smith has been walking the banks of the Ouse for 52 years, since he was 19 years old. For many of those years, he was officially the keeper of the river, hired by the local angling society to watch over the water and its banks. He is retired now, but he still walks and he still notices.

The short, but important
River Ouse.

There are not many left like Smith. He is a man who knows when the winter has turned harsh in Scandinavia because he hears the wigeons outside his window at night, making that little whistling noise as they arrive in the UK in search of milder air; who knows he should stop and stand quietly when he notices two male adders on the river bank and watches them dancing, twining their bodies together in a contest for dominance. Smith knows how the river flows and how the animals who live in it and beside it behave. He is also acutely aware of what is happening around it, of threats and tensions, of the subtle impact of private profit and public bureaucracy. On several occasions while we were out walking this summer, he told me that he was worried, frightened even.

Read this ‘long story’ from the Guardian - “Britain's water crisis”.