water

It is cooler today - headed for 96. In the last days, Baghdad would have been a cooler vacation spot. We have been only 10 degrees short of Death Valley, littered with white skulls. It's an elemental play between sun and water. Straw covered fields, shrinking ponds, cracking earth - but I can watch this with a distant eye. My children's dinner does not depend on the garden delivering. I can plan better irrigation for next year. But it is hard to forget the Anastazi cave dwellings of Arizona, abandoned, it seems, for lack of water. It is hard to remember how important water is when you have swum in it. And yet: "Water is of major importance to all living things; in some organisms, up to 90% of their body weight comes from water. Up to 60% of the human body is water, the brain is composed of 70% water, and the lungs are nearly 90% water. Lean muscle tissue contains about 75% water by weight, as is the brain; body fat contains 10% water and bone has 22% water. About 83% of our blood is water, which helps digest our food, transport waste, and control body temperature. Each day humans must replace 2.4 litres of water, some through drinking and the rest taken by the body from the foods eaten." (Water Science for Schools) The water trough fed from Ton Bean's spring stopped filling up the other day. I feared his spring had dried up. But no - the pipe was just blocked, and now it spills over onto the pasture, making raw green patches. My own spring still shoots out about 6 gallons a minute. Drought - what drought? It's hard to leave the spring head without wanting to turn it off to conserve water. I fantasize about connecting a few hundred feet of plastic pipe and filling a swimming pool by the house. Meanwhile I have YB spring water in the cooler in my house. Its SO good - both the taste and the very idea. Imagine these springs were to dry up. Everything would change. Right now, despite the scorching heat, these springs suggest the land is plugged in to a sustaining source of life, one dancing a deux with the sun's energy. If it failed, it would be a pagan God is Dead moment. And around the world, that has happened and is happening.