We prefer to control our rivers—to dam them for power, to wall them with levees, to funnel them into canals or aqueducts to supply farm or city, to reroute them entirely to keep cities in good standing. It’s true for all bodies of water, really, from the ways we drain wetlands for housing or wall off the ocean for much the same. But most rivers of our world have been here much longer than our species; in extreme cases, they’ve run through the same channels for 2,000 times longer than we have walked the planet, fostering and feeding ecosystems for actual epochs. Water knows how to handle itself. Our dominion, though, has ruined or at least damaged its patterns, whether depleting groundwater, increasing pollution in waterways, or depriving adjacent land of the minerals that might make it fertile. We prefer to control our waters, and they, in turn, suffer in…