Admittedly, I am adding my voice to this particular forum that is blogging rather late. I've heard it said that these days everyone is a writer and hardly anyone is a reader. I tend to be more of the latter. But in these times especially, I read some of what is out there and feel the need to add my voice to the collective. Maybe it's believing and internalizing what all of us millenials were told from our childhood: that each of us is special.
In any case, upon further consideration of where my interests lie and the perspective I have to offer from my professional life in water and my personal interest in spirituality and religion (following a lifelong struggle with the concept of religion and culminating in an accidental trip in 2010 to the Holy Land), I thought I'd take a crack at it. I'd never thought of it in these terms until recently, but a visit to the shores of Lake Michigan, only a seven-minute walk from where I currently live, made the connection between water and spirit very clear to me. I was worn out after a day of work in the water business, and felt the need to get away from my thoughts--the need to simply be and not think. So I walked down the winding tree canopied path to the Lake, walked along its shores, and then laid face up toward the sky on one of the old, abandoned concrete docks. Hearing the waves crash and looking out over the vastness that is the Great Lakes makes a person feel so wonderfully small. It's the same awe I experience every time I get to take a close gaze at a starry night sky. But then I notice not only its vastness, but I see a small shell on the beach and some washed up piles of algae, and I am reminded of how much the ecosystem beneath this seemingly rich, watery vastness has changed. Lake Michigan, and several of the other Great Lakes, have experienced unprecedented changes in their ecological structure over the last decade or two from invasions of species previously unknown to them. I can't help but wonder what that means for the thousands of species that used to make Lake Michigan their home. I've read about how this lake has become a paradox--a freshwater desert--and I feel a sense of loss.
As a child, I grew up in the Great Lakes basin. The property that my family owned had wetlands and a small canal that led to a creek and several lakes. I spent a lot of my time outside exploring those areas, and I remember my first real visit to the shores of Lake Michigan when I was a kid, its waters cold and clear. Turns out that even the water clarity was a relatively new phenomenon since the invasion of zebra mussels in the '90s would likely change the clarity of the lake for many years to come.
I stayed in the Great Lakes basin until I went to grad school, when I decided it was time for a change. Rather than living in the water-rich Midwest, I opted for the painted deserts of the American Southwest. What a dramatic change. I became interested in water simply because I knew it was scarce from a water budget standpoint, but all evidence from political and social structures was to the contrary. Water was dirt cheap, and people could use as much as they wanted. They could build lush golf courses, develop businesses with immense thirsts, and build impoundments (a.k.a "lakes") for boaters and jetskiers without batting an eye. People were moving to the desert in droves, only then to continue their lives as though there were still ample supplies of water. I was fascinated and repulsed at the same time. Water seemed too precious to me for this kind of profligate use. So I spent my time studying water and the ways people used it, and what problems might arise as a consequence of rapid development in such an environment.
But, I missed the water-richness of the Midwest and moved back to work on water issues on the greatest of the Great Lakes--Lake Superior. I stayed there for three years implementing the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, a binational agreement between the U.S. and Canada to improve water quality in the Great Lakes. I met some amazing people whose lives and livelihoods were inextricably linked to that mighty body of water. Its impacts were so far-reaching that to be on Lake Superior is to be humbled by it.
Now, I make my home in Milwaukee on Lake Michigan. I still work on the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, and I still enjoy being humbled by this lake, although in a different way. Lake Michigan is much more degraded ecologically than Lake Superior, but it's not easily visible. Just because it isn't on fire, like rivers from the 1970s, doesn't mean that it doesn't suffer. Milwaukee is poised to make itself something of an international water capital. I'm hoping that what I learn here can be useful to examining issues related to water in other places. The Sacred Thirst, I am hoping, will help document some of that knowledge. More and more places are having difficulty securing water resources for their growing populations, and water pollution is certainly not a thing of the past. Water also has a central but often overlooked place in human (and non-human) life. For me, I know that I personally need spaces where I feel small, where I am reminded of what surrender really means, and I can truly feel like I am a part of The Created. So for me, this blog helps capture the responsibility I feel to try to improve this amazing resource, but to also explore what water does for and teaches the spirit.
So, time to delve beneath the surface (pun intended).
