Mid winter in the Midwest, and I trudge through deep snow to cart a few groceries. Almost guilty to mar the dentless white by the invisible road. News are replete with floods and disasters for the multitudes in the southern hemisphere. After several years living in the desert, I value water more than ever.
Water quality and availability roam the back of my mind in ever recurring concern; I search magazines and internet for blue-blue depths, for signs of recovery of lakes and rivers. By now I have amassed a virtual pool of information to pour over the ready made conscience of the liquid choir of readers who reach out for a cleaner future.
Found this note from our time near Death Valley where water should be most appreciated...
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Today is the 22 nd day of March, spring is in inevitable progress, and i dream of water.
I have before me a vision of what paradise would be, for me, a stream running clear and free.
I hear the crystalline sound from rounded rock to rounded knee, cool morning sound.
I smell the mint, the cress and the fishy froggy roots of aquatic plants under velvetine fingers.
This is my world, transporting me to pristine memory of a shrinking commodity.
In the South, muddy killing rampaging waters, savaging man's work indiscriminately.
In the North, soggy snow melt unsettling roads and bridges, carrying whole houses to shores.
Glaciers faint away sloppily down the valleys, exposing their moraines to the forlorn.
Desert gullies wash away the silty deposits of last year's rains and cascade the inevitable idiots.
Flash floods careen car carcasses to rusty oblivion in some forsaken canyon.
Debris clogs the arteries of a drainage system, plastic bags swirling in crazy eddies of slime.
Fish gasping in toxic pools of last flood's excess, oil and herbicides oozing from gallon jars.
Blatant carelessness clutters the bottom of a puddle with glass and metal shards .
I find a frog in the tulles and insert a biometric tag, one limb missing, another half formed.
The Amargosa toad is now free to reproduce in the last protected arroyo near Death Valley.
The dairy upstream has left us with a red film of putrescent mystery, even the goat won't drink.
Lake Powell is but a playground of man's refuse, dead fish and flotsam scat as decor.
Barbie kicks one last stiff leg up out of the mire, she'll never go swimming in this hole again.
Paper, plastic and whatever man disregards have all ended up in the waters of my dreams.
I lift a clear glass bottle of cool tap water and thank whomever for the liquid of my life.
Reuniting the ethers around with the waters within, an organic gesture, and bow silently to the sky.
Humble self again for the luxurious remnants of the essence of need, need for water.
