In an extract from her book ‘Dark Skies’, Anna Levin is romanced by the River Cam.

Soft summer rain was falling on a midsummer evening as we stood in a defiant circle near the riverbank. We gathered here, with a prelude of procession, painting, poetry and song, to declare the Rights of the River Cam. These rights had been adapted from a Global Declaration of River Rights, printed as a ceremonial document and we grasped our copies and read them out loud like a chant. It was tricky to get the timing right with a large circle speaking in unison, yet the words gained power as we pronounced them together. We weren’t just reading, we were declaring – a sense of solemnity and gravitas in the damp air all around and between us. Nearby, willows dipped their long arms into the Cam, and the rain made tiny dimples on the water’s surface.

The idea of a river having rights has been gaining traction throughout the world. We heard of rivers in Bangladesh and New Zealand having their legal status recognised, as part of a growing global movement asserting the rights of nature. The rights we were declaring were not legally binding, but a statement of intention of what should be. A lawyer gave a speech, explaining the logistics of these claims; if we wait for courts or parliament we could be waiting a long time, he said. We need to act now, as if these rights were real, and so they will become so. The difference between the declaration having no effect or a massive effect depended on what we did next. He exhorted us all to go further to express our commitment as guardians of the river: make a noise, keep campaigning, write a love letter to the Cam.

This made me smile, partly in surprise at a lawyer instructing anyone to compose a love letter to anything, but also in a startling recognition. I had only recently realised that I had been falling in love with the Cam.

It certainly wasn’t love at first sight. See, I’d landed in Cambridge from Scotland, where rivers rush and race and surge through glens and cascade down rocky drops and hurl gleaming salmon from their raging froth. I’ve watched in awe as rivers casually carry tree trunks, tossing them around playfully as they hurtle along. I’ve paddled in rocky coves, feeling the tug of a river’s momentum on my bare legs. I’ve watched otters slip into their swirls, disappearing with a flick of a tapered tail. So, I came to have certain expectations of a river as a force of energy, full of character and thrillingly alive.

‘Call that a river?’ I’d thought, when one of life’s freak waves lifted me from my home in Scotland and put me down right beside the Cam. It was pretty enough, edged with coloured houseboats and fringed with willows, but seemed as tame as a suburban canal. If there was aliveness, it came from the humans that moved along it from the first hint of daylight: running, walking, cycling, buggy-pushing and, of course, rowing, rowing, rowing. The rhythmic chunk, heuch of oars and the shouts of the coxswains were the soundtrack to those first bewildered weeks as I watched the river from my new office window. It seemed the people here moved constantly and full of activity, but the river didn’t do much at all.

‘Come closer,’ said Cam, and so I edged toward the riverbank and sat watching the patterns of sunlight shimmering and wriggling on the surface. I looked into the reflections of the willows and deeper, below, to the dark shapes of small fish flickering through the shallows. A moorhen crossed the river, bobbing its head back and forward like an Egyptian dancer, stepping out with astonishingly large feet. And there! What’s that? A rat? No, too fluffy, so buoyant on the surface. A water vole moving along the reedy river’s edge.

Other river sounds became familiar, along with the oars of the rowers. I’d lie in bed listening to the clop, clop, clop of swans’ wingbeats; the first time, half asleep, I’d thought of horses on the riverbank. One morning in May, a few homesick months into the move, I’d woken to a sound that was strange and familiar all at once. I was drifting in and out of sleep, wondering how such a harsh sound could evoke such sweet memories. It was grating and rasping and yet it filled my sleepy mindscape with Scottish islands and boat trips, pink thrift against blue water, sea cliffs and big skies. Was I dreaming? I reached over and tugged at the curtains. An elegant white bird was dancing over the Cam, circling, hovering and flickering in the air, then suddenly plunging, gannet-style, into the water. Terns! What are they doing here, so far from the sea? They’d come upstream to breed, come to remind me that we’re not so far from the sea, that this is a river of course, a real river that flows on to the sea, connecting this city to the open ocean, as water connects the whole world.

In the years that followed, the first tern on the river would herald the turning seasons, and I’d look forward in anticipation. I greeted that first sighting with significance and joy, the way people do with swallows. The grating cries of terns spoke to me of summer, of sea, of connection.

‘Come in’, said Cam, as spring turned to summer. I stepped, shrieking, off the steps and out of my depth. I gasped as Cam rushed around me, the sting of cold on my arms, my belly, my breasts. I let out a yelp of exhilaration as I reached out and swam, and the cold shock eased to cool silk, flowing all around me. So this river does move! I could feel the gentle tug of Cam’s current, it carried me one way and I could feel an extra push as I swam against it. I flowed with it a while, encased in a world of green. High above was an arch of branches and the light was filtered through silver-green leaves. All around and below me, green water moved over deep green plants that reached and stroked my feet, making me start and flinch away. The green world was emblazoned with huge, bright turquoise dragonflies, shining as if lit from within.

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Anna Levin’s ‘Dark Skies’ — an exploration of our changing relationship with the night sky — is out now and available here, published by Saraband.

Read Karen Lloyd’s review of the book here.