My recent, personal experience with this most basic life-giving resource.
Over the last four days, I have found myself immersed in water (sorry about that). Water as a topic for conversation was everywhere.
It started with me designing and facilitating the inaugural meeting of the Global Partnership for Oceans, a group convened by the World Bank and composed of dozens of public and private sector organizations who have decided to come together to seek collective action to save our oceans.
Then, in Friday’s Washington Post, there was this short piece by Ruth Marcus on her dinner with Matt Damon. He’s part of an outfit called Water.org that is trying to bring clean water and toilets to poor communities, one household at a time.
On Friday afternoon, driving to pick up one of my kids from school, I listened to this radio story about ocean exploration, the Mariana Trench at the bottom of the Pacific, and how little we actually know about the oceans.
Next, I spent the greater portion of a glorious spring Saturday alongside the Potomac River watching one of my daughters compete in a crew regatta, and was struck by our use of this particular body of water for so many purposes. The racers and countless others were there for different kinds of recreation; and fishermen, a police boat, and Coast Guard helicopters all had access to do their thing too.
And lastly, we had a soaking spring rain yesterday, the lack of which had been turning our season from green to brown and sending up all kinds of warnings about fire hazards. In April.
This confluence of stories and experiences made me aware of water in ways I hadn’t been before. It’s possible that this is all to do with Earth Day, which I gather has morphed into Earth Week.
I don’t know that I have any piercing insight as a result of this set of experiences, but I thought it was worth mentioning them.
Water is basic, and precious. And like so many precious things in our lives, we take it for granted. Perhaps we should pay more attention.