Dive into the depths of a Berlin lake, journey from the Thames to the banks of the Nile, and meet Black Mary, the keeper of a lost seventeenth-century healing well in London.

With a foreword by celebrated writer Robert Macfarlane, this is an urgent, evocative collection of writings celebrating the source of all life: freshwater, our most precious resource.

Robin Wall Kimmerer observes a raindrop fall on a carpet of dry moss and asks what we can learn about community, resilience and living small from mosses, one of the earth’s oldest plants. Lucy Jones steps her way through nettles and willowherb to listen to the running river water near her home, cooling the heat of a busy mind. And Vandana Shiva campaigns for water justice – reminding us that we are all participants in the Earth’s water cycle.

Featuring 21 writers, including Rebecca Solnit, Ocean Vuong and Elif Shafak, this is a treasury of writings on hope for ecological abundance, desire, beauty – and restorative planetary justice.