Sunaura Taylor, author of Disabled Ecologies, describes modern environmental health as a "mass ecological disablement of the more than human world, a disablement that is utterly entangled with the disablement of human beings."
Rivers, on a long view, are alive. They are born; they change; they shift their channels; they forge new routes to the sea; they move both gradually and violently; they teem (usually) with life; they may die a quasi-natural death; they are frequently maimed and even murdered.