The Gift of Water

as seen in the Marquette Monthly May, 2019
By David Van Kley

Water Winter Wonderland

Water. From the beginning, water has been necessary to sustain life. The earth would not bloom without it. Human beings cannot live without it. In fact, we are—literally—made of it. Approximately 60% of our bodies consist of water.

Water is a gift. We do nothing to conjure gifts into existence: a gift is provided for us, presented to us, by another. We have done nothing to deserve the aquifer beneath our feet. We did not create the majestic lake that calls forth our expressions of wonder. We cannot summon the rain or snow with a wish. Water is a gift. Pure. Unadulterated. Gift.

I am writing in February. My office window opens onto a sun-dappled scene blindingly white and fantastically still. Approximately four feet of snow covers the forest floor, leaving only mounds to suggest its understory. Many of the trees are bent over, weighted by snow from recent storms and coated with the layer of freezing rain. It is a white, white world!

It is hard to believe I’m looking at water, inches and inches of it! But it is so. Actually, two-thirds of all the fresh water on earth exists in a frozen state. Most of that water is encased in polar ice caps. The rest lies in glaciers high in the mountains.

As for the frozen water outside my window, you know as well as I what will happen! Sometime between late March and early May, all that snow will melt. Some of its water will quench the soil’s thirst, bringing forth ferns, trout lilies, trillium, maple leaves. Some of it will search out lower ground, finding a way to the Middle Branch of the Escanaba River. From there, it will flow south and east to the river’s main stem all the way to Big Bay de Noc at Escanaba. And then, it will course across Lake Michigan, through the Straits of Mackinac, into Lake Huron and down the St Lawrence Seaway, joining droplets from countless other rivers and streams until finally pouring into the Atlantic Ocean.

Each spring, winter trickles into a flood. Who can comprehend this stupendous, dynamic miracle? Who can describe what it does to our hearts? Words are to spring what an April weather map is to purple crocus poking through vanishing snowbanks.

Water. The old Michigan license plate boasted of “A Water Winter Wonderland.” Michigan was and is. More than 20% of the earth’s unfrozen fresh surface water lies in the Great Lakes that define our borders. Thousands of inland lakes lie like gems on our landscape; as many streams lace our hills. Almost everywhere you look, you will see the gift of water.

In Michigan, it may be hard to believe that the supply of water is limited. We do not see the freshwater icecaps melting into the rising salt seas. We live far from the glaciers of the Cascades and Rockies. Droughts are rare in Michigan.

Our family lived for nine years in western South Dakota, where the lack of timely rain could reduce grasslands to stubble and soils to cracked clay, hardening to a consistency of crumbling concrete. One summer, my most beloved Black Hills trout stream dried up completely, became a waterless canyon. Meanwhile, apocalyptic fires raged, leaving behind wastelands of blackened pine and fissured rocks. It was a sobering experience for a Yooper like me. But it is the experience of many people in our world.

T.S. Eliot once wrote: “If there were water and no rock…if there were rock/and also water/and water/a spring/a pool among the rock…if there were the sound of water only/not the cicada/and dry grass singing/but the sound of water over a rock/where the hermit thrush sings in the pine trees/drip drop drip drop drop drop drop…but there is no water.”

What if there was no water?

In Michigan, we are stewards of a disproportionate share of the earth’s water.

Thankfully, it is not too late to treasure and preserve it. The work of doing so begins with you and me.

Let us remember that water is a gift.

Let us remember that water is essential for life.

Let us ensure that generations to come may see forests of maple and balsam draped with winter’s snow and spring’s flood rolling toward the sea.

WATER-SAVING TIPS

Purchase and use a rain barrel, using the gift of water to renew your garden.

Plant trees. Trees store carbon and release oxygen into the atmosphere, helping forestall climate change.

Contributor’s note: David Van Kley is a retired Lutheran pastor who served congregations in Upper Michigan and South Dakota. He shares a home with his wife Arlene and their dog Wiiggles on the Middle Branch of the Escanaba River.

“The Gift of Water” columns are offered by the Northern Great Lakes Water Stewards and the Cedar Tree Institute, joined in an interfaith effort to help preserve, protect, and sanctify the waters of the Upper Peninsula.