Water is an essential element for all living things, and has been represented in song, on Redwork embroidered splashers, in photographs, and in oil paintings for centuries. One of the greatest music hits, when I was a teenager, is the mellow Simon and Garfunkel song, “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
A romantic folk song, “The Water is Wide,” tells us “The water is wide, I cannot get o’er, but give me a boat that can carry two, and both shall cross, my love and I.”
photo by James Cummings – German Splasher of Boy Fishing
WORDS
While in the car, on a trip to Delaware when I was about five years old, I was thirsty but there was no place to stop for a drink of water. However, we kept whizzing past various bodies of water. Precociously, I said, “Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink.” My parents thought that to be a brilliant statement, and so, after that, much to their chagrin, they heard it often.
In fact, they heard it just about as often as the road sign that we’d seen: “Don’t stick your arm out the window too far, it might go home in another car.” I liked the rhythm of the words, and the saying was rendered, on my part, as kind of an obnoxious, chanting mantra! I am sure they were equally sorry in having told me what the sign said. However, I digress!
NEEDLEWORK
Water has been celebrated in needlework, especially on the surface of many a Redwork splasher. These contain scenes of children fishing, boys jumping off a bridge to go swimming, and Herons standing among tall cattails. We like water imagery. Somehow, it makes us feel liberated, clean, and refreshed.
Antique Splasher, photo by James Cummings
SONGS
A trip to the beach always makes me stop to consider what is beyond the sea. Isn’t there a Johnny Mathis song with the same name, “Beyond the Sea,” – “someone is waiting for me?”
Bill Staines, a New Hampshire folksinger/songwriter wrote a song called “River,” – “River take me away, … ever moving and free … let’s you and me, river, run down to the sea.”
RELIGION
In Christian religions, water is a symbol of purity. One Gospel song, or perhaps more than one, talks about sins being “washed away.” Priests bless the water, and the wine. In southern regions of the country, full immersion baptisms take place in rivers.
MAXIM
We have a saying: “Well, all that is just water over the dam.” Interpreted, that means that the past cannot be changed. It is finished. The water has gone over the dam and is now in another place and since water cannot roll uphill, it will remain where it is. We cannot reclaim the past, and most of us would not have that desire.
THE HUMAN BODY
The human body contains a lot of water. Pills called diuretics will help to rid the body of the build-up of too much water. Natural ingredients such as caffeinated products (tea, coffee) will accomplish the same task. The body is in a constant balancing act to maintain just enough water, but not too much.
POLLUTANTS
The way that man has interacted with nature has caused changes in the environment. The rivers and streams of the northeast are no longer fit to fish because the fish contain high levels of mercury (which is carcinogenic). This situation is due in part to coal mining and the processes now involved with that: clear cutting entire mountains, burning wood, blowing up the same mountains and flattening them to get at the coal. In one instance, an area the size of the state of Delaware has been cleared in this manner. We all pay the price, when we mess with “Mother Nature.”
Ironically, in parts of Africa, and in the western United States, there are drought conditions. Every drop of water is precious because there is not enough. In the northeast, we have also had dry conditions, increasing the danger of forest fires. Luckily, as I write this today, it is raining!
I remember hiking in the White Mountains, along a stream. A man with two children told them to cup their hands and go scoop up the “fresh, clean mountain water.” Not wanting to be a spoil sport, I did not intervene to tell them that the same water, no doubt, contains such organisms as giardia, a bad “bug” that causes extreme internal distress.
NATURAL DISASTERS
Water can rob people of a home, employment, and an entire community. Hurricane Katrina created a storm that will forever be remembered as one of the greatest disasters of our time. The results were heartbreaking.
Yes, in the prophetic words of a child, I summed up the situation about fifty years ago: “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.” A scarily, sobering thought, isn’t it? We keep trying to master the element of water, but it has a mind of its own and is easily tainted by environmental pollutants.
So, we turn to bottled water, a relatively new concept. This water has been proven to be just tap water, in many cases, with the same bio-contaminants and mineral elements as the water from your own tap. Additionally, if not recycled, the plastic bottles, which do NOT degrade naturally, add to further pollution of the planet.
WAYS TO HELP
There are some simple things that you can do: wash only full loads of clothing and dishes, limit the amount of time you spend in the shower, and avoid using phosphates to green up your lawn. They are pollutants that cause problems when they run off into streams. Alternatively, decaying leaves supply the earth with natural nutritious ingredients. Don’t be so fastidious about raking them all up, in the fall.
If my little collection of thoughts mean anything this morning, other than the ramblings of an old woman, I hope you’ll realize that we should never take water for granted. Just as we are conservators of textiles, we should all try to conserve water. Water is a life-giving resource that we should work diligently to safeguard.
Patricia Cummings
