'What we have lost in our well-plumbed world is a reverence for water,' says birder-author Stephen Rutt

                                                 

Enchantment - and anger! Stephen Rutt's new book 

AWARD-winning author and birder Stephen Rutt certainly has a vivid imagination and a poet's evocative way with words.

Of  a murky  morning on a RSPB reserve at Forsinain Hill in Scotland's Flow Country, he writes: "The mist makes birds invisible but sharpens their calls. 

"I can hear the shrill eruptions of a singing Dunlin, the Hammer Horror hauntings of Curlew, the vocal cords of Golden Plover like an aeolian harp, whispering the wind through taut strings.

"Unerringly, there is a sense that they know I am here."

This vividness of description characterises much of the narrative in Stephen's latest book, The Waterlands, which reads beautifully- for the most part meandering along gracefully like a slow-moving river or chalk stream.  

But in many of the places he visits, he finds the serenity of watery places has long been  despoiled by what humankind has  done to them, be they ponds, lakes, bogs, estuaries or oceans.

When he reflects on scenes of pollution, for instance on the River Clyde not far from his home in Scotland, the author's mostly sunny mood  turns to dismay, even of anger.

"What we have lost in our  well-plumbed world is a reverence for water," he writes. "Our rivers die through a thousand cuts.

"It is a thing deserving of rights and a voice to be heard, but, too often, a river pays the bill for our actions with its life."

The author chronicles some of the industrial and other practices which do the damage, but, for the most part, he does so in a way that is matter-of-fact rather than particularly strident or judgemental.

But he makes an exception when it comes to the privatisation of the water industry which he describes as "a disaster in slow motion".

He adds: "The money in the system is skimmed off as profit and goestowards paying corporate debt instead of fixing leaks."

Subtitled Follow a raindrop from source to sea, The Waterlands is published today (March 26) at £16.99 in hardback by Elliott & Thompson.

                                

Stephen Rutt  - a poet's way with words