6.20.22. WATER.

I was doing a couple of dishes, washing up after lunch. I carried some water, used but fairly clean, to water the fern on a hot day.

Water is precious — and it’s in short supply in a drought in California. Better to water the fern, rather than dump the water down the drain.

The real point is to be conscious about the water — use it with awareness, realize that it is precious, use it with love.

Stories help. I remember my father’s story: he was working a summer job, on shipboard, passing through the Panama Canal, about 1930. It was hot. Water, water, everywhere, but salt-water — fresh water was precious. Each sailor would get one bucket of washing water per day. First you’d wash your face, then your body, then your clothes, and last of all your socks.

I have a story, too. When our daughter was one year old, we lived for a while in northern New Mexico, a quarter mile outside of a village of 50 people, at the end of 10 miles of gravel road and 5 miles of dirt road. The spring for drinking water was a mile or so away. There was clean water in the creek across the meadow, and sometimes there was muddy water in the small irrigation canal. So we had “abundant” washing water, but drinking water was precious. Being careful was only natural.

So for me, careful water use is built-in by my life experience. I want to convey this to my grandson, who has always and only known water from a tap. Outside on a hot afternoon, he delights in getting soaked with spray from the hose. I encourage him to have the extra water fall on the plants — but I only encourage gently, as his joyful water-play is important, too.

Back inside, doing dishes again, I pour the used water into dirty pans to pre-rinse them. My wife comes over and fills a large pan with fresh hot soapy water to “put it to soak.” I sigh to myself, but don’t try to change her “wasteful” water usage this time — her stories are different, and rational argument is not the key here.

I do think about how to influence a larger audience, how to bring water-conservation to scale in a California population with so many different stories. I will start by publishing this story. And I am inspired to get more disciplined about writing the stories that I can tell. “Simply Wonderful.”

As John Denver sang, “Step by step, Row by row, Going to make this garden grow…”