Book Review: “Nine Ways to Cross a River” by Akiko Busch

This was a three-month book. I thought I’d never be done, and not because it wasn’t good, it was. But it was full of so much rich, intellectual metaphor that there was no fast way through it. Every three or four paragraphs I had to stop and regroup, my brain – already taxed and on its way to bed by the time I got around to reading every day – just couldn’t keep up.

But I’m glad I stuck it out. Busch is a smart, observant and insightful writer (and swimmer) and while her way of connecting ideas is what makes the book a little laborious, it’s also what made it worth reading. And like a lot of great books, that was most obvious at the very end.

The Gist
Busch, an avid swimmer who lives along the Hudson River, swam across that river in 2001, and then over the next four years she swam across seven more. Along the way, she discovers as much about herself and the nature of human identity and direction as she does about the rivers themselves and the communities that surround them.

Just upstream, where the water is more peaceable, was a different theater of indolence: installing themselves within pods of inner tubes, floaters of all ages and sizes were drifting lazily down the river like a fleet of human-industrial mutants, proving that sports and somnambulation can be congenial partners. Tubing, a near effortless way to experience the river, is an experience that commands little respect. Perhaps it is because the equipment itself is so primitive or because tubing requires minimal talent or expertise; there is no way to steer or stop the thing other than using one’s own limbs, and an old inner tube doesn’t follow any given direction except that of the river. Small wonder that in a culture that puts a high value on action, knowledge, and a sense of purpose, tubing is generally regarded as the lowest form of river recreation, the dumb cousin to kayaking and canoeing, which require grace, skill, agile maneuvers of all sorts. Surely, though, the pleasures of drifting downstream in an inner tube should not be so easily dismissed. If a river can appear idle and lazy, why not follow its example?”

Of course she’s preaching to the choir, here. I’d love to read more of her books, I love her brain and her cerebral eye. But before I do that, I’d better clear my calendar for another few months.

Check the book out for yourself here.

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Tags: akiko busch, book reviews, books, human nature, nature, rivers