Fresh Waters (Journeys Through the Vanishing Worlds that Sustain Us)

A gorgeous work of nature writing by the winner of Canada’s most prestigious literary award for nonfiction, Fresh Waters sets off on an enchanting journey across the globe, through the lakes, rivers, glaciers, and other freshwater habitats fading before our eyes.

Perhaps it began with her fear of open water.

Living in Berlin, Jessica Lee had dared herself to swim in lakes around the city. Which, in a way, is what brought her to Lake Stechlin: once famous for its clarity, now erupting with algae, and home to a floating laboratory where scientists study delicate freshwater ecosystems, where vertebrate populations have declined globally by a horrifying 85% over the past fifty years.

Charmed and inspired by these scientists’ fervor, Lee would soon find herself tramping through the overcast British countryside, clearing out dried up “zombie” ponds so that seeds hiding dormant in the soil might resurrect plant life not seen in decades. She’d slip on a wetsuit to dive into frigid Norwegian lakes in search of relict species, visit a tiny population of landlocked salmon (a cultural symbol of perseverance in her ancestral homeland of Taiwan), join Polish activists campaigning to rebrand a neglected wetland, and meet a group of environmentalists in Madagascar whose efforts to save the rarest duck underscore how protecting human and more-than-human worlds are intimately intertwined.

A hopeful, galvanizing read—at once joyful and elegiac, intimate and expansive—Fresh Waters invites us to imagine new ways of living with (and caring for) the waters that sustain us.