The Gift of Water

as seen in the Marquette Monthly March, 2018
By Russell Thorburn

In the Mojave National Preserve you never see water. What you see are broken shards of a prehistoric lake and mountains saddled like a parched tongue over the landscape. You see a world of sand in its infinite hurry to bury you. The sky, a mirror, reflects the thirst of travelers who are passing through the Mojave or who never made it to the other side.

In the desert, water is always on your mind, but as distant as the song God made when the world was new.

We carry water inside us, some neglected percentage we never consider, unless a night of drinking beer produces its own streams, and in the morning we pour tap water into coffee makers, trusting that this water is pure and untainted by lead or corrupted pipes in one-hundred-year-old structures.

We drink coffee made from beans harvested from Guatemala or Bolivia, faraway countries we will never visit—and in the hope that we have learned this lesson of flowing, we finish that cup for another.

I was in high school when I first heard Robin Williamson, of The Incredible String Band, sing “The Water Song,” on WABX, a Detroit FM underground station. Late night radio before bed sent these electric dream currents down into my dream world. Williamson was singing about “the lesson of flowing,” making water into this magical being—godlike, I’d say.

He seeded this song inside me, and many years later I am now meditating upon the meaning of water and how it can be magical, a wizard of change. If you stand there at the sink, hands outstretched to cup the water flowing from the faucet, it may be magical because it is—there. Now. But in many places, nearby or faraway, there is no clean water. For us, though, at the faucet, the water sings through our fingers. This singing water, of course, needs to be conserved. Don’t become mesmerized by its silver spiral running past your fingertips.

Naturally—naturally—water can be dangerous. When I listen to the ancient Scottish ballad of “Sir Patrick Spens,” sung by Robin Williamson on his ECM record The Iron Stone, I can’t help but share Sir Patrick’s lament when he learns he is to sail across the North Sea to Norway through rough winter seas. Sir Patrick Spens is “the best sailor that ever sailed the sea,” but it is water that will doom him.

Sir Patrick’s doom comes with the drone of a double bass, an atonal Hardanger fiddle, a shawm with its haunting bleats, and, surprisingly, fatefully, a Jew’s harp. In the ancient lyrics, one of Sir Patrick’s sailors warns that he saw “the moon late yestreen” holding “the old moon in her arm”—a foreboding that yields to a dooming sea in rolling waves as heavy as mountains. We know these North Seas in our Lake Superior, waves that can slash out and over rocks and kill anyone standing too close.

For Sir Patrick Spens and the Scottish lords, water destroyed them. They tried to fix the departed bolt in the good ship’s side with a web of silken cloth, but they could not stop the sea from welling in.

A water song lies frozen in the winter, buried deep underground, waiting to emerge from our taps, hopefully to run clear under our hands into a dream of summer. The water song is trying to teach us the lesson of flowing, but sometimes we don’t listen, and sometimes there is no possibility of water at all—and sometimes water can kill. Not only in the deepening onslaught of a sea’s ferocity, but sometimes in the very water we drink.

Robin Williamson, Scottish bard, sings, “God made a song when the world was new.” It is this song that we need to preserve, this song that will teach generations the lesson of flowing.

WATER SAVER TIPS

Don’t pollute by dumping garbage or plastic items into Lake Superior. It takes a drop of water nearly 400 years to travel from the headwaters of Lake Superior to the mouth of the St. Lawrence River.

When swimming, respect water’s undeniable ferocity and the treachery in its undercurrents.

Remember that Lake Superior is the final resting place for 350 shipwrecks.

Contributor’s Note: Russell Thorburn is author of Somewhere We’ll leave the World (Wayne State University Press, 2017).

“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.