Water, water, everywhere...

and look what it's like

Water, the H2O stuff we paddle atop is everywhere. It makes up the vast majority of our bodies and the majority of our planet's surface.

Like any good product, it comes in a variety of styles and containers. There is the river-water model, sometimes slow and calm and sometimes fast and foamy.

The stuff is in our breath and the air we breath. Sometimes (it has to do with temps and relative humidities...but don't let me digress), it forms lakes (we call clouds) in the skies.

And, when these conditions are just right (or lousy,depending on whether you're ashore or asea), the clouds touch the ground in the form of fog.Yeap, water, water everywhere and, if we don't watch out, there will soon be not a drop to drink. I am not an environmental whacko, but I have enough of a science backround to know that most of us are getting more than our minimum daily requirement of things like mercury, PCBS and fertilizers and that our hair and skin dry out from the chlorine we put in the stuff to kill the bugs we also put into the stuff. I see the signs along the local river talking about how much of which kinds of fish are safe to eat, and I read the warnings about pregnant women not eating the coho salmon from the big lake.

So, Silbs, exactly what has happened to cause this outpouring of obvious awareness and, perhaps, feelings of guilt about our water supply? You don't have a third eye or any birth defects other than marginal looks...and that's genetic not environmental. After all, you've had over 65 years to do something about this. You've spent decades on, in and under the stuff and never took the time before going for a paddle to opine on the state of the world's water. So why know?

Why now and not before? Maybe it's because this is the first time I've known I am going to be a grandfather (The world belongs to the children, and the childdren belong to us all).

Paddle Safe... DS