Water in Spring

flow all around us

Here at the end of April, I am daily grateful for the water flowing around me. I like the smell of the wet air and the rush and gurgle and sight of the river testing its banks. We all learned about the water-cycle in school--somewhere around second grade or so; we drew pictures of rain falling, running downhill, collecting in streams and rivers, and making its way, at long last, to the ocean, only to be evaporated and start the cycle all over again. 

image from Vecteezy

Of course it is so much more complicated than that. Yes, there are mountains and rivers and the ocean, so easy to represent on an info-graphic. In real life there are boulders and hillocks and bogs and plants and roads and pavement and houses and surfaces of a semi-permeable and impermeable and a very permeable nature along with everything in between that have a say in where the water goes. 

Just one month ago, our field was still covered with about 2 feet of snow. That's a lot of water. I've been enjoying watching it melt, listening to it melt, and following it's paths in my garden and woods. As I've mentioned in previous posts--all that snow we received over the winter could mean freedom from hauling water next fall. Our spring has run very low several times over the last few years; so low that we've had to rely on hauling water. 

Last summer, when we were preparing for a dry autumn, I read a book called Rainwater Harvesting for the Drylands and beyond by Brad Lancaster.  It changed the way I looked at my garden beds. In the book Mr. Lancaster suggests donning a raincoat and boots to traverse the land when the rain is actually coming down. I've had plenty of opportunity to do that in the last couple of weeks. Watching this water course down the hill gave me ideas for reworking my garden patches with hugelkulture swales to catch and store the water as it flows down the hill. Hugelkulture is an example of planning without worry; knowing there will be dry weeks at the end of summer, we plant on natural sponges that retain moisture over these dry times. It's a hopeful and realistic outlook. On many days of hydrology explorations I didn't quite stop at the edges of my growing plots and found myself in the woods following the path of the stream fed by our now-overflowing spring. On several occasions, I went armed with my hand-held recorder. The result is a return of improvising with the birds; I'll be playing along with the sounds of forest rain, streams gurgling, and spring birds singing at Music for Meditation. 

A place in our woods where the water
gurgles unseen under the ground

One amazing aspect of this is how much water one can hear on the move even when it's not obvious to the eye. This particular pile of wet leaves sounded like a rushing stream. Walking over the ground in these woods is not quite straightforward; there are downed trees and boulders and hillocks of unknown origin on every turn. The water makes a quite slow path down the hill, and much of it simply soaks in--an ideal situation for the trees and other plants of the forest. Though it might not rain for all of June again this year, there is water now and it is being held in the reservoirs of all that detritus that the forest stores on its floor. It will be there when the trees need it all summer long. 

All this thinking about water jogged my memory about a scientific field of inquiry. Some scientists have found evidence that water is changed structurally by the substances with which it has come into contact. They've demonstrated that water can transmit information about these substances through electromagnetic signals--a kind of water-memory. I learned more about this fascinating vein of investigation by watching this documentary about Nobel laureate, Luc Montaigner. 

Since I've spent about the same amount of time on agricultural and nature observation as I have practicing, I'm especially grateful to Judy English and Sue Reid for playing at Sunday's event. Judy and I will play a piece by Cecile Chaminade called spring. It is full of sounds of running water and birdsong to my ear.  Sue will share some very cheerful Schubert and a lovely rendition of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata: the Sustenuto opening movement. That beloved piece of music proportedly received its popular title because it reminded a listener of moonlight reflecting off of Lake Lucerne. 

Music as Meditation will take place on Monday, May 5 at 5 PM at Christ Episcopal Church in North Conway. The event is offered in the spirit of a gift. I hope to share the spring spirit with many of you.