Tending the Waters: The Pure Spring of Belonging
 

I lay down on my belly next to the tiny stream flowing from a spring on the side of Mount Shasta. Bees hum close to me as they cruise between blossoms of late Summer wildflowers that dapple the moistened mountain meadow with their rainbow magic. As I lower my lips to the stream, the burbly-chirp of the pure water dancing around polished stones fills my ears. Sunlight flashes from tiny crests and troughs. I squint. The rocky ground is hard and craggy on my chest, my legs and bare feet stretch out into hummocks of wild grasses behind me, my lips touch the frigid water, and I siphon a rare gift from the heart of the mountain into my body. An ancient thirst is quenched - to divine from water a spirit of connection that water alone embodies, the visible flowing spirit of connection between all things.

I look up to see high Cirrus clouds painting the rarified upper atmosphere with their tiny water molecules; in the distance lower and denser cumulous clouds concentrate water into raindrops; the very air I am breathing is filled with micro-mist humidity; my lungs exhale mist; my body is mostly water - as is true for all living things; arterial streams and rivers feed the oceans which reciprocate with ocean-forged storms that wash across the land; rain and snow and glacial melt softly and slowly drill down through layers of rock to spend decades to hundreds and thousands of years below ground, only to surface as volcanic hot springs or cold springs like the one I am received by here. 

All water in the world is ultimately connected to every other drop of water. From the most rarified, atmospheric highest illuminated high, to the lowest most dense geologic darkly low. Water is the life intelligence of life on Earth; it is the gift wrap that the gift of life is delivered in.

At the bottom of this mountain a huge artesian spring rushes from a small slope to produce an instant river - the headwaters of the Sacramento River. People gather there in a constant flow of joyful sharing of the waters with their jugs to take home to pets, family, friends, neighbors and co-workers - water is for everybody. This spring was encountered by the First People in this area - the Winnimem Wintu, the Pit River, Klamath and a few other tribes who settled here thousands of years ago and who tended to the land and the spring as sacred water, keeping this place in harmony with human presence for the rest of us who are privileged to drink from its life-giving well.

The crest of Summer’s wave has finally broken, with the last rising heat wave surrendering into a rapid spiral down into long-sleeve weather and thermostats being turned on to heat our homes at night. Water is still flowing from some springs to nourish drainages before the sky-waters reverse their evaporation on sun-cooked thermals to condense and free-fall cold onto and into the land as Winter storms. 

The song of the Autumn Equinox is a song modulating from the bold harmonies of Summer into a time of suspension between hot and cold as a kind of gentle slack tide of the world’s water as Summer’s low tide shifts into Winter’s high tide. The midpoint where light and dark, hot and cold, high and low, dry and wet suspend a note that invites us to quiet, pay attention and feel the shift - all riding on the thin-mist-becoming-full-flood cycle of water upon which the boats of our lives peacefully intermingle in the harbor of life on Earth with all other life.

We are invited by the arrival of Autumn to reflect on how we used water during the sparse Summer months and how we will care for it in Winter - from securing the roof from leaks to storing rainwater for next Summer’s garden.

Like the Winnimem Wintu, their First People neighbors, and all of our Indigenous ancestors, the tending to water is a universal instinct, expressed individually and in community with other humans and all life. Tending to the waters is perhaps one of the highest expressions of being a conscious human being and a powerful path to knowing belonging whoever and where ever you are at any time of the year, on any continent and in any season. This instinct is so universal, it is almost like water itself from our own bodies takes all the rest of our senses and sensibilities and leads us to the well-spring of its unifying wisdom; leaves us at its shore to intermingle, and to seek what is deepest within us to engage with what is at the heart of life. 

When you take that next glass of water to your lips, ask yourself where did that water come from, when did it actually begin, and how is it going to serve you now? Maybe that water might not be as pure as a mountain spring, though it undoubtedly once was, but perhaps the sincerity of your questions will be.
 

PICK OF THE MONTH: Marin Tracking Club facilitator and good friend, Richard Vacha's new book, The Heart of Tracking, essays on the mystical and sensory journey of animal tracking.