The Waterlands

It falls in a moment. When the heaviest droplets of ice can no longer be held, the first slips from the sky and plunges, down through the damp, cold air, thawing as it plummets. Once one slips, the others follow. The earth breathing in rain. Our raindrop splashes into the sodden hillside, reunited with its kind; then a pull, the tug of gravity, and it flows for the first time, merging with rainfall and river source.

The Waterlands explores the natural rhythms and miraculous power of water, following a raindrop as it falls to the ground in the Lowther Hills of Scotland and travels through the landscape down to the Firth of Clyde. On its journey, it flows into river sources in the upland moors; saltmarsh-flanked firths and estuaries; serene and spectacular lochs; chalk streams, described as ‘Britain’s rainforest’ for their global rarity and unique wildlife; blanket bogs that are both land and water, a thin skin of peat over millennia-old water.

But these wetlands are under threat: 87% have been lost around the world in the last 300 years—reclaimed, built upon, polluted, diverted, dammed. We have affected water’s form, flow, and health to the extent that some might say all water on Earth now bears our fingerprints. As scarcity and water conflicts loom, it is more important now than ever that we protect this shared and essential resource.

Exploring geography, ecology, climate change, natural history, and social history, The Waterlands is a captivating retelling of the water cycle, revealing everything a single raindrop can show us on its journey from source to sea.