“The river and its waves are one surf:
where is the difference between the river and its waves?
When the wave rises, it is the water; and when it falls, it is the same water again…”
These are famous verses from Kabir, a mystic poet in Medieval India who had the distinction of both Hindu and Muslim followers. But this isn’t about Kabir or religion.
As Rabia and I sat on the bench one day last week feeling a cool gentle breeze off the water lick our faces, I started thinking about water. But allow me to pause in order to thank whoever fixed “our” bench. It has been missing a plank for several seasons now, which wasn’t so bad for me but Rabia seemed a little cramped. I learned recently that Brian, Olive’s human who never sits there but knows that I do, alerted the City that the bench was in need of repair. Thank you Brian, and thank you City, for fixing our bench — and also for the massive clearing of scrub from lakeside and Long Pier last week.
Anyway, water. Two billion people live in water-stressed regions of the world, a number that is growing. Two of our fastest growing cities are in deserts. How utterly nuts is that? So why don’t we just make more water?
You probably know this already but I wasn’t a very attentive student in high school so I had to read about it again. H20: every molecule of water contains two atoms of hydrogen linked to one atom of oxygen. So why not mush them together and make some water out there in the desert? Because the energy it takes to consummate that union can also create a very big explosion. Still, humans being what we are, some people are trying.
Other smart folks are trying to get more water by interrupting the water cycle. But to me interrupting natural cycles always seems like a bad idea that eventually comes back to bite us. Example: using the Colorado river to fill ostentatious fountains in Las Vegas and irrigating arid land in California to grow tomatoes and strawberries with little taste. Now the Colorado is down to a trickle in places.
Even so, some people are trying to trap moisture out of fog. Others are seeking to capture the 6% of moisture in dry air. There is even a guy in Australia who claims to get millions of gallons per day by using refrigerant to cool the blades of his windmill, then extracts water vapor the cold blades create. In fact, there is a water cycle, so interrupting it to take water out of the air for consumption means it’s lost to the cycle elsewhere. Thus, less moisture down river, so to speak.
Sitting there on the bench looking at the waves, remembering Kabir’s poem about how waves are water by another name, reminded me how precious and vulnerable our abundance of water is here in the Finger Lakes. Three beaches in Canandagua Lake were recently closed due to E. coli. Every resident living along our lakes, and the farmers and industries who produce waste or use chemicals within our watershed, have a sacred responsibility to protect the purity of the water curling between the rising waves. If Kabir was still here, he would find an elegant verse to say so.
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