The gift of water
19/08/16 03:48
When the snow melts in the high country, there are places where the water drips off of the edge of the snowbank one drop at a time. If you are up there at the edge of the snowfield, you can watch the droplets form, then enlarge and finally become too big to hold onto the edge of the snow and release, dropping onto the ground below. A group of drops become a small rivulet, running down hill toward a small brook. The brook becomes a stream, the stream becomes a river. There are a thousand tributaries to a single brook in the high country. In the early summer there are areas where the ground is soft and spongy and puddles form in each of your steps. On its journey down from the mountains, the water may form a pond behind a beaver dam, with some water passing over and through the dam while a significant amount remains behind the dam, filled with frogs and water bugs and fish and all kinds of creatures that are dependent upon the aquatic environment. The pond goes through cycles of freezing and thawing depending on the season. Some ponds become so deep that they don’t freeze all the way to the bottom, harboring a layer of liquid water year round. Still, there is a circulation of the water, with some escaping the dam and flowing down stream, carrying with the water sediments and plant nutrients that are distributed downstream.
When the streams come together to form a river, there is incredible power. In the high water of the spring, entire trees are washed up and carried away by the river. When the river is running high, you can hear the moving boulders at the bottom of the river rolling and crashing against one another.
Along the way some of the molecules of water are transferred from the surface of the ponds and lakes and rivers into the atmosphere. Water vapor can travel for miles and miles carried on the air, forming clouds in the sky of almost infinite variety. When the temperature and air pressure are just right the water falls from the sky. Rain, snow, sleet and hail are all the results of water vapor taking a ride in the atmosphere and condensing into liquid, freezing into ice and changing into different forms.
We used to think that it rained every time we took a camping trip up into the mountains. It seemed like the weather would be perfect when we started hiking but by the time we were far enough away from home that we knew we’d be sleeping in a tent, the water began to fall from the sky. In the early years, we didn’t even have a tent, just a tarp that we would form into a lean-to that would keep the ground dry in a small patch that we’d cover with spruce branches before rolling out our sleeping bags. Among the old photographs that we occasionally get out are a number of shots of each other with water dripping from our caps. We’d get soaked and have to dry out our clothes around a campfire, infusing them with a distinctive, smoky aroma. The sun would come out the next day and we’d dry out and continue our adventure.
There is something very wonderful about the sound of rain on a tarp or tent overhead. I can recall it completely with some of the old feelings intact as I lie on my bed in our camper. It is a much more convenient way of traveling. Our clothes are dry and our bedding remains dry as we sleep. The sound of the raindrops on the roof of the camper is more pronounced than the sounds we hear in our house when we stay home. Each pitter patter of rain is a bit of music that carries memories as well as a rhythm for our sleeping.
I lie in bed and imagine the journeys that the water has taken. Some of the drops of water have spent decades, or perhaps even centuries as part of an ocean. In that context they carried minerals and salts and suspended any number of different floating objects. Enormous boats are buoyed by the power of the water. Some drops of water have spent millennia trapped in glaciers, slowly carving and sculpting the landscape beneath their thick layers of ice. Some have irrigated the fields that produce the crops that feed us. Some have traveled relatively short distances in recent times, flowing down from the edge of a snowbank and evaporating from the surface of a pond before falling as a raindrop fairly close to the beginning of that particular journey.
The miracle of water is not just an external reality, however. We are made of water. The blood that courses through our veins contains water. Our skin traps water molecules inside of us that take form in our vital organs, protect our fragile brains from injury and perform a dozen important life-giving functions. It is no exaggeration to think of water as one of the most important gifts of God.
If you look at water through a microscope, you will find that it is teeming with life. Many small organisms live their entire lives inside of liquid water. Each has an important function in the web of life and contributes to the growth of plants and animals in a unique way.
When I take time to look I also realize that water provides an incredible aesthetic beauty for our eyes to behold and our spirits of enjoy. Just watching drops of water fly off of the spray from a stream is entertaining and gives a sense of wonder and beauty. No wonder the ancients spoke of intangible things like justice and joy flowing down like waters. Water has a magic and a power that is beyond our ability to express in language. We make metaphors and each seems to fall short of the reality.
Today I begin with a prayer of gratitude for the gift of water.