Review: Water Always Wins
💧Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge - by Erica Gies (2022) 📘[1]
“Water is the driving force of all nature.”
This was another book club read for the Alberta Wilderness Association (September 2025).
The book is self-described by the author as aspiring “to spark curiosity about what water wants by looking at its physical relationships with other entities”.[2] Gies draws examples from around the world - the United States (primarily California and Washington State), Canada, Iraq, the United Kingdom, India, Peru, China, the Netherlands, Kenya and Vietnam. She shares her personal journeys to these many places and what she discovers along the way.
From alluvial fans to dams, from paleo-valleys to wild wetlands, the author covers a substantial array of topics on water.
Lovely photo of a woman in the southern Iraq marshes
The use of Phragmites australis (a type of reed grass) by locals to build traditional homes dates back 9,000 years.
In her discussion about the marsh that lies in southern Iraq (between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers) Gies hits home the reality that many people have denied, that wetlands are useful to humans.[3]
“Perhaps the reason the marsh dwellers have endured here for millennia is because they accept their water world for what it is - a rich source of life - rather than trying to drain it...Their approach is rooted in observation, tradition and respect.”
As an environmentalist and a Canadian, I’m partial to the chapter on ‘Beavers - the Original Water Engineers’. The national animal of Canada is the beaver (Castor canadensis) and still appears on our nickel. Gies even mentions northern Alberta as home to the longest documented beaver dam, which “measures 2,790 feet (850 metres)* - twice the length of Hoover Dam”.[4] The loss of beavers on the landscape drastically changed the ecological makeup of North America. The reintroduction of beavers in the UK and the US show the extent of rehabilitation that can be wrought by a few ‘water engineers’. Her discussion about sexing a beaver is comical and provides some relief from the depressing population numbers she mentions earlier.
Having visited Vietnam last year I was also interested in the section on the destruction of mangrove forests, to make charcoal and make room for shrimp farms. This has resulted in salt water progressing into the Mekong Delta, and destroying farmland that produces the country’s staple crop, rice.[5] It seems so short-sighted.
If I have a single criticism of this work, it is the author’s use of imperial measurements. While it is true she is American, she is living in Canada now. The fact remains that the majority of the people in this world use the metric system, only the USA, Myanmar and Liberia continue to cling to the imperial standard. Perhaps she is only interested in reaching the people from those countries with her message? Just My Two Cents!
This book covers a very thorough review of many of the world’s water issues, and Gies does consult with many different experts, referring to them as ‘water detectives’. She uses the idea of ‘Slow Water’ [6] as an approach to deal with many of these problems. For a serious topic I enjoyed the bits of humour interspersed throughout, and particularly some of the sub-section titles, like “Beaver Jedi Mind Tricks”, “Soggy Cushions” and “Sedimental Journey”.
I will finish this review with a final quote:
“...water always wins. Certainly that is true in geologic time. If water were a category in the game rock, paper, scissors, water would beat them all every time.”
This is an informative book about global land use and potential solutions, and I challenge all politicians in Alberta to read it!
P.S. If you have a suggestion for the next AWA Book Club read, let me know in the comments below. Suggested books must have some sort of environmental focus.[7]
[1] Erica Gies is an award-winning journalist. You can read more about her on her website: https://ericagies.com/
[2] Gies, 2022: 11
[3] I wish the Alberta Energy Regulator would get this. They have recently condemned a breathtakingly beautiful, patterned fen in NE Alberta to death (McClelland Lake Wetland Complex), by allowing Suncor to drill for oil in this wetland. Alberta Wilderness Association (AWA) News Release: Alberta Energy Regulator fails Albertans by Ignoring Evidence; Won’t Reconsider its Approval of Suncor’s Flawed Operational Plan for McClelland Wetlands. Posted online November 24, 2023. #DontMineMcClelland
[4] Gies, 2022: 98 *metric conversion added by me in the quote; See also: Thie, J. (2007) The Longest Beaver Dam in the World. EcoInformatics International. Discovered October 2, 2007. I also recommend this good article that came out last year in The Tyee: Frazier, I. (2024) Visiting the World’s Largest Beaver Dam. The Tyee. Posted online January 16, 2024.
[5] Gies, 2022: 241; I also wrote a paper last year (2024) that included this topic about mangrove loss, Endangered Species Conservation in Vietnam.
[6] Slow Water is a term to describe “water management projects…(with the) aim to slow water on land in some approximation of natural patterns.” (Gies, 2022: 8)
[7] Alberta Wilderness Association started their ‘Book Club’ in January, 2024, and meets approximately quarterly, at their historic office in NW Calgary. The next meeting will be held on Tuesday, January 13, 2026.
