You know my grandma hooked my sister & I with the dinosaur pee…

Like every great teacher or master she knew that when a student goes from accepting information to questioning & seeking, that student is open to the lesson. So she finished.

Grandma explained that humans live in a closed system. She said, “You know girls, there’s no such thing a NEW water.” She went on to tell us that every drop of water on this earth has been used over & over again. What was once dinosaur pee millions of years ago had been evaporated, condensed, & precipitated countless times to become the water we’d been swimming in at the beginning of the lesson.

She said the real magic in the system happened when the Mickey Mouse water molecule broke up & evaporated because the only things that evaporated were clean pure atoms. Everything else, the dirt & junk, were left behind.  Evaporated atoms were ready to be condensed again into perfect water. A unique system designed  to clean up water again & again.

She explained that the problems came when people polluted the air & the ground because then no matter how clean the evaporated water was, it became polluted again when it traveled through bad air or ground. My grandma managed to give us a magical understanding of how our water recycles itself endlessly to support the miracle of life on earth.

Today I understand more of the finer points of the water cycle, more of the science, some of the arguments, but I never lost the sense of awe & magic that my grandma gave my sister & I.

Sometimes I wonder at the water of Torch Lake & its nearby sisters.  I jump in on a hot day or kayak in the early mists & wonder how many drops of that clear blue water used to be dinosaur pee & how many times they have gone through the water cycle. I wonder how many of us understand the magic of what happens before our eyes every day. And I wonder how much we humans are willing to do to protect & preserve our precious closed system.

Me…I’m off to read about those big beasts!!!