The Road to Zagora by Richard Collins

Author:Richard Collins [Collins, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781722978
Publisher: Seren

P is for Paris (France)

We were in Paris for a few days on our way back from Morocco at the end of our last big trip abroad. It had been raining and the River Seine was full of swiftly flowing grey water. There were tourist boats and commercial barges making their way up and down stream, their bow waves spreading and slapping against the concrete river banks. We walked from our accommodation near the Botanical Garden down to the Île de la Cité and back a few times and I was aware of the strange miracle of constantly flowing water. For in Northern Europe the rivers run every day of the year whether it has been raining or not. Perhaps it has been fine and dry for three weeks across northern France during a hot summer spell. The river still flows. How weird is that?

Pretty weird if you are an immigrant from north Africa. In Morocco we had seen dried up water courses fill after rain and then empty to nothing a day later. In so many of the drier places we have visited rivers are seasonal or occasional things. Our rivers must seem beyond explanation to someone from those countries. What we have is groundwater. It flows out of the rocks into our rivers and streams along their entire length every day of the year. We can drink it, swim in it, transport ourselves and our goods on it, and write songs and paint pictures about it. Groundwater makes our landscapes, developed our economies, and enriches our culture. I’ve never thought about it before.

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