The many manifestations of water

Kirk Ericson | Feb 16, 20230

“The sea refuses no river

And the river is where I am.”

— Pete Townshend, “All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes”

When water molecules gather, their identities are surrendered to the whole.

We have names for these communities of water molecules: ponds, oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, streams, brooks, waterfalls, pools, puddles, fjords, covers, geysers, creeks, rainfall, bays and inlets. We also have sewer channels, tsunamis, king tides, deluges, avalanches and ice storms.

Water groups have their apostles. Some people prefer a hot summer day around a concrete pool, some like an ocean beach, some a river, some a mountain creek, some, especially children, a tidepool warmed by the sun and muddied by sand. Some people like water that has congealed into crystals. Those people are often Canadians.

A stormy ocean witnessed from a safe distance during the deepest days of winter is inspiring and warming, as is a glassy lake, playing cool jazz under a summer sunset. Watching and hearing a towering waterfall after it trips over a cliff can hypnotize a human. The tempo of life while floating down a river on an inner tube is medication for anxiety, with fewer side effects than a prescription. You’re traveling exactly as fast as the river flows and there’s nothing more for you to do.

The sight of a confident stream of water arcing out of a drinking fountain in a city park on a warm day can make you feel young and wistful and immortal. A summer midafternoon spent on a pebbled river bar might become the memory you find most comforting on your death bed.

The variety and wonder of water groups can make you forget that they’re all the same material: A molecule made of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen — just three moving parts. You get a bunch of them together and voila! You have something that inspires, threatens, transports.

Eventually, all water molecules shed their collectives and return to the largest group, its mother, the ocean. Rivers view oceans as destiny. Oceans often welcome rivers with open bays.

No droplet is an island.

You could be a water molecule hanging in a puddle one day, the next day you’re part of a rivulet, and the next day you might stumble into a ditch that feeds into an irrigation canal. Then you enter a river that flows into an ocean. You’re a shape-shifter that always assumes the shape of something larger than yourself.

All water molecules are homeward bound, but they’re also homeward departing. Once we enter the ocean, we’re not done. We could get sucked into a cloud that spits us out into the same puddle where we started the most recent leg of our journey. We could end up in a rain barrel, an old tire or an infinity pool belonging to the sultan of Brunei. We could return as a single teardrop on the face of a boy who was just dropped off for his first day of kindergarten.

Water is to nature as a chisel is to a woodcarver. Water shapes and crafts, leaving clear evidence of its past and present, and its potential for the future.

What remains is a testament to the artist.