Precious Water

The temperature is dropping, and the heater in the house turns on early mornings now. We also made a fire in the fireplace a couple of nights ago for the first time in the season. Our cats had not seen fires yet, so they were quite curious. They watched from about 6 feet away for a good half-hour before they started to get closer. In no time, they were curled up on my Zabuton in front of the fire savoring the warmth.

This is going to be the third winter that I get to live up here in the mountains where we have very distinct seasons — only 80 miles north of the big city of angels. I used to insist that I am in tuned with the seasons even while living in the city. There are always different flowers and foliage you could observe throughout the year in different times: i.e., “seasons.”

What I am keenly aware of other than the change of seasons as I live through these seasons in the mountains is the state of nature. I hear it’s going to be another fairly dry winter on the West. It’s the 3rd year of this severe drought, and we’re living with restriction of water usage in California. When we’re living in the city, though, it’s not in our face that many species of plants, hence other species such as birds and animals, are suffering, too, from not enough water while up here we see increasing number of trees turning brown and eventually falling down or being cut down.

Our mountain communities have own wells we get our water from. In our neighboring communities, the water bed has gone so low that nitrate content has become dangerously high. People are not allowed to drink the tap water. Kids and adults are showering in the water that they cannot drink. That can happen to our own community any day if the drought continues. Usually during the winter, most households up here would turn off their irrigation for the landscape as we should have enough precipitation between rain and snow. If we don’t get much moisture, we may have to keep watering to maintain our plants; thus having to continue to use our precious water.

In my recent podcast interview, I learned that you can collect 600 gallons of water from a 1,000 sq/ft roof with an inch of rain, which we can get in a monsoon-like rain. What’s taking us, modern civilization, to capture and utilize the rain water more efficiently? I’m working on getting some rain barrels for my house, and working with a local non-profit to see if we can help others get them at deep discount. My hope is that if we can get more homes to install and capture the rainwater to use for irrigation or simply let it permeate the soil rather than letting it go down the storm drain, we’ll be able to help reduce the demand on our precious tap water and replenish our water table.

Ah, I didn’t mean to rant. But I guess that’s what was on my mind today…