The Story of Water
As we wander in a modern universe of intelligence, creativity, and thought, we often return to our own and repeatedly find—that life in any form orbits around the simplest of molecules.
Wars have been fought over less, marriages have failed on fewer grounds, and even the world conservation movement is born within its enduring cause. It is everywhere but can only be felt surreptitiously. Life requires it, is even made of it, and our world's thirst for it is relentless. Under wind, storm, and tempest have destroyed more property, including plant, animal, and human life, than any other force. It leaps and bores through channels, embankments, dikes, levees, dams, impoundments, streams, rivers, and pipelines. It has shaped mountains and has carved the grandest of canyons simply because it wants to ravenously return to its home—the ocean, to be liberated and find peace. Water despises altitude and is perfectly subjugated and obedient to its companion force—gravity. A simple drop under pressure can become a rampage as it tears through numerous barriers—finding a more quiescent and lower realm of smooth and lasting tranquility.
Water also abhors cleanness and prefers a social and solute life—picking up random salts, dirt, oils, and debris along its way. It can be cleansed—but only for a fleeting time, and in reality, prefers to be an instrument or means, rather than an end, finding equilibrium with nature and its surroundings. It can be hard or soft, depending on its mood. It is hot as steam and cold as ice and presents itself in many colors and flavors. It is light but heavy—in fact, it is the only substance lighter as a solid than as a liquid. Hence, it can float and drift upon itself, protecting infinite aquatic wildlife or causing the demise of even the mightiest of sailing ships. Its mysterious vapor can create a calming breath yet can also form thunderous bursts of lightning and storms of destruction. It takes to the air with the warming suns and settles on the earth with the cooling dusks. Water indeed leads a life of serenity yet hides a forgotten personality of impatience, eagerness, death, and terror. It is nature's schizophrenic mirror. And the warmer our delicate planet gets—the more water’s vaporous energy rises into our atmosphere—waiting to unleash its dark flood of terror upon us.
All this complexity is founded in a perfect love affair between the universe's smallest, oldest, lightest, and simplest atom of all, hydrogen, the grandfather of all the elements, and the fuel of the sun and stars. Combined with its soul mate oxygen, forged within in the fiery bowels of trillions of stars—it waits its destined time to cradle life.
Some of these stars explode as a massive supernova, further feeding the cosmos and providing the stuff for the birth of many planets, like our little blue one. All our life is built from these stellar remains and dusts of time. And situated just the proper distance from its ancestral star—earth and water find a perfect home as they nourish its brood of life. This is not an accident.
Water is rightly timeless and eternal, and its extent, to countless throngs of disbelief, is adequate to sustain us forever—but only if we can responsibly and adequately develop it, use it, and reliably return it from whence it came.
In our sojourns—nourished in this sustenance, we discover that we are only loaned this valuable life force for a fleeting moment. Immeasurable epochs of time recycle it and continue to recycle it, like an endless river—giving and taking along its distant passage. Similarly, as we journey down this river, we give, and we take, provide and consume. Hopefully, our vessel will tread a more traveled and expanding verdant course, rather than a dwindling or forgotten one forged from disheartening dearth or a ravenous fire of ongoing neglect.
Many people expend their lives—arduously working to provide and protect this incalculable life-giving essence or resource. What responsibility could be more valuable and trusted by public dependence and confidence than this? What supply impinges more on the natural health and vitality of a community and our well-being? And yet, what selfless resource is devalued and forgotten as much as this simple, pure, and needful one?
Ultimately—we may only know the significance and value of our stewardship from deep within our own minds and hearts. The world may never appreciate its water managers, operators, and stewards until there is little good water remaining. Water taken from the tap and water sent down the drain—is frequently taken for granted. It is expected and therefore not valued by the many—but some sense its actual value and know how difficult it is to find and direct.
In the end—we find that any person or entity cannot own water; it can only be borrowed. How we use and conserve it during our temporary guardianship determines precisely how many others, whether plants, animals, or society, can safely and reliably do the same. Water is life—and managing this invaluable resource may be accomplished selfishly or selflessly—to the lasting effect of an endless stream of countless others.