A river's history is often both visible and invisible, and the key to understanding something's past is to look into the stories told by the communities that it surrounds. The significance of river ecosystems in the cultures of indigenous communities has been highlighted prior, but for certain indigenous groups, they could not be divorced from their rivers; anything that impacted the river impacted them as well. Nature played such a key role in the lives of indigenous communities that it is hard for us to understand them without understanding the ways in which they viewed nature, as a collaborator, as a partner, and as something worthy of respect and honour.

Nowadays, our connection to nature is more severed than ever before. We thus need to rebuild the bond that nature has been trying to uphold with outstretched arms. There are many ways that we can go about doing this individually and collectively, as illustrated in previous pathways, but there are numerous groups actively trying to bolster the significance and the roles that rivers play in our lives. A Bridge for Max, for instance, is a documentary that was made about a bridge built across the San Diego River in an attempt to make crossing the river a safer endeavour, in honour of Max Lenail, who passed away while crossing the river. There are groups that organise river cleanups at Mission Valley, communities that are restoring the Mission Valley Preserve, teams monitoring the health of the San Diego River,, people studying and examining River Regulations, and organisations holding outdoor education programmes.

There are so many things that we can do in order to interact more ethically with rivers, and in fact, its imperative that we do, in order to keep river ecosystems alive and flourishing.

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