Rivers which flow straight into your heart

This is an absolutely magical piece of writing by Michael McCarthy in The Independent.  It's on critical contribution of calcium carbonate to biodiversity, and in particular on the chalk streams of England, one of which is the inspiration for the title of this blog.

Here's the bit on chalk streams:

"But the rivers of the chalk are what I love best. The chalk streams, as anglers have named them, one word instead of two, are the most beautiful rivers anywhere on the planet. There are about 60 of them, from small rivulets to the queen of them all, the River Test in Hampshire, and they are characterised by the clearest and purest water in the natural environment, often referred to as "gin-clear". (The chalk filters it, and water companies are desperate to get their hands on it).

The chalk streams are immediately arresting. Their flow is stately, never sluggish, never torrential (the Test is like the Loire in miniature) and they are filled with a profusion of fish, of aquatic wild flowers like the ranunculus, the white water buttercup, and of aquatic insects of which the most magnificent is the mayfly, which is emerging just about now. Over the next month there will be clouds of mayflies over the chalk streams, the males dancing to attract females in one of Britain's most stunning wildlife spectacles, before mating and falling back to the water surface where trout will greedily gobble them.

Even a glance at a chalk stream lifts my spirits, and every time I catch sight of one I feel like offering up a prayer in praise of calcium carbonate. To some people it might be merely the stuff they use to powder the lines on tennis courts, but it also gives us the gentleness of the English landscape, the pyramidal orchid, the Adonis blue, and rivers which flow straight into your heart."