View from the North 40: Like water for thought processes

“It is water, in every form and at every scale, that saturates the mind. All the water that will ever be is, right now.” — National Geographic, October 1993

Here in north-central Montana this year, we are celebrating every rare tenth of an inch of rain wrung from the sky, not enough to fill our waterways or make dry grasslands green, maybe only enough really to grow mosquitoes to any degree.

But in County Kerry, Ireland, which has thus far in 2021 received almost 34 inches of rain, three boys vacationing with family to The Glen Pier along the Atlantic shore found a bottle with a message written, sealed, then tossed in the ocean by a Canadian fisherman, a UPI article said.

The bottle washed up on shore prior to Thursday and it started raining here Tuesday — coincidence, or not? I’m thinking Mother Nature diverted our water to the ocean to wash that stupid bottle across the Atlantic Ocean, and once the job was done we got our water back. It’s kind of like how your shower water pressure dies out when some fool turns on the kitchen faucet.

I’ve heard more far-fetched explanations for our drought.

——

“For whatever we lose (like a you or a me), it’s always our self we find in the sea.” — E.E. Cummings

After almost drowning in the ocean once, I’m not particularly fond of its awesome power.

CBS8 out of San Diego reported July 15 that commercial diver Luke Halmay was under 60 feet of water when he found an iPhone-wallet case combo dropped by fellow Californian Steven Grafton while Grafton was fishing on the ocean. Basically it was a miracle for someone to be in the right place at the right time in all of the Pacific Ocean to find that phone and wallet.

The only thing I ever found in the ocean was that day I almost drown because a large wave crashed on top of me and held me down.

I was flailing under turbulent water until my left hand hit the sandy ocean floor and I just kept digging in while I scrambled on hands and knees up out of the water and onto the dry beach — which is where I finally stopped long enough to find my bikini top down around my waist.

No one noticed.

——

Filthy water cannot be washed. — African Proverb

I lost my glasses in Fresno Reservoir once. I don’t wear my glasses very often, so I forgot to leave them in the car, then forgot they were on my face and then I dove into the water. Well, technically I remembered them just before my face hit the water but, of course, that was too late.

I had recently relocated to this land of the silted river from the land of clear mountain waters and was pretty disgusted that I couldn’t see 2 inches under the surface of the water let alone the 3-feet or more down to where my glasses were sitting in the murk and mud.

My husband came to my rescue that time. I was heading out into the water to tramp around with low hopes I of a miracle that I would stumble upon my precious personal item, but John was all “slow your roll there, steamboat, let’s walk a grid.” So I was the movable marker on the beach while he walked a grid pattern in the general area in which the glasses were lost. He found my glasses in the blind with his toes in less than 5 minutes.

——

“I got this powdered water — now I don’t know what to add.” — comedian Steven Wright

In answer to a plea for assistance posted on Facebook, a British diver traveled to Windmere, the largest natural lake in England, to help a woman from Birmingham find her prosthetic leg that she lost in the lake.

UPI reported Tuesday that Josephine Bridges lost the prosthesis while swimming “at some point after jumping off the Millerground jetty.” And I know what you’re wondering: “At some point”? Wouldn’t she know exactly where she lost the leg because that’s the exact spot she started swimming in circles?

That’s an astute question, which I think I can answer because my husband only has one arm but I have observed that he can swim in pretty straight lines. So, yeah, it’s very possible that she could’ve swam for a ways just as straight as can be before her dire situation sank in — so to speak.

The good news is that the volunteer diver, Angus Hosking, founder of Lake District Diving, was able to find the prosthetic right away. He said the search conditions were difficult, but the leather Birkenstock sandal on the foot caught his eye. 

Bridges said she was grateful to have her artificial appendage returned to its rightful place.

“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water,” anthropologist and philosopher Loren Eiseley once said.

And maybe a little bit of it is in that leather sandal.

——

Deep waters run silent and wise. Shallow waters chatter and gurgle without saying anything at all — Relatively unknown column writer at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .