Book Review — Flow: Women's Counternarratives from Rivers, Rock, and Sky
By Katie Ives | A version of this review originally appeared in Alpinist 90.
Beneath old formulaic tales of men's dominion over mountains, rivers, and air, there have always been more varied stories by people of all genders — at times flowing like underground streams or bursting forth with a thunderous roar. The women's anthology Flow derives power from the interweaving of such counternarratives. Shaped like currents of water and wind, ripples of stone and ice, undulations of bodies and minds, each story gives momentum to the next. And as these alternative tales break through cracks in old barriers, they unleash floods of experiences long hidden or suppressed, reflecting not only the perspectives of visionary individuals, but those of past, present and future communities.
Among the storytellers, American guide Janel Lynn Rieger, daughter of a migrant Mexican farm worker, senses dreams of her Indigenous ancestors like memories of warm desert light dazzling across Kulshan's glacial ice. Naina Adhikari finds solidarity with other Indian women kayakers amid the turbulent rapids of the sacred Ganga. Walking a highline between Castleton and Rectory Towers, Czech athlete Anna Hanuš Kuchařová feels herself merge with ruddy cliffs, snowy peaks, and shifting winds until she enters "a space where no one claims anything, yet, or maybe precisely because of that, there is an inexhaustible amount of energy, love, and peace."
There's a particular strength and creativity that arises from the margins: an ability to see beyond assumptions that can transform all outdoor writing. The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defined flow as a state of being when someone becomes so absorbed in a pursuit that the borders between themselves and their surroundings fade. For women of Flow, this experience leads them to view themselves as part of nature and to commit to its stewardship. At a time when the Trump administration has been rapidly deleting references to both women and the environment from government websites, it becomes even more urgent to share these counternarratives — and to tell our own.
About Katie Ives
A graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Banff Mountain and Wilderness Writing program, a recipient of the H. Adams Carter Literary Award, and former editor-in-chief of Alpinist, Katie Ives (she/they) has written for The New York Times, Outside, and Adventure Journal, as well as many other outlets. Her book Imaginary Peaks: The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams earned a Special Jury Mention at the Banff Mountain Book Festival in 2022, and one of her Himalayan Journal articles was a finalist for the Mountaineering Article Award in 2025. Katie is committed to supporting emerging storytellers, particularly those with less access to formal writing instruction.
