"Water is the driving force of all nature." – Leonardo da Vinci
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County's average rainfall in a normal year is close to 37 inches. We are on our way to that average, according to the rain gauges.
The hillsides are soaking in the colorless fluid, and they're greening up. Streams are swelling and the lake is looking good.
It's amazing to think that water sparkles on roughly 71 percent of our planet's surface, and that it is bound up in ice caps, glaciers, oceans and aquifers.
An amazingly tiny increment, 2.5 percent of Earth's water is the only fresh water we humans have to depend upon.
Water's wondrous cycle of continuous evaporation, condensation and precipitation is an amazing feat of nature.
That H2O is vital to our lives and plays such a huge role is easy to take for granted, but is astounding to consider.
The economy depends on it for fishing and agriculture, tourism, manufacturing, and on and on. If you consider water's many properties, those of liquid, solid and gas you can think of it as having many “behaviors or temperaments.”
Water has always been important for human settlement. Our local Indian tribes always settled near lakes and streams in ancient times, then settlers followed suit.
The ancient Egyptians were centered on the Nile River, while the Chinese civilization lit on the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, and so it went.
Water wheels, such as the historic wheel still in use today at Napa County's Bale Grist Mill State Historic Park, is an example of the work water did and does for humankind.
Then, in 1846 it was the hub of society for settlers to gather for grain grinding and gossip. Water wheels powered mighty steamboats up mighty rivers, and steam powers our famous Geysers geothermal fields.
The list of uses, needs and benefits of water for humans is seemingly never-ending.
The amazing mechanics of water-travel inside and up plants and trees happens in plant's xylem.
Vascular plants have a handy system of transport to receive needed water and nutrients. With some plants, their xylem is like a tube with cells called tracheids.
During this process “the force is with them,” and the root pressure along with transpiration combine to move the water within the plants.
Merely stepping outside your door you become privy to water's powers. View the erosion of stream banks, and how the powerful elixir exposes roots of many plants and trees. Note the smooth surfaces of water-worn rocks.
Breathe deep of the stream's negative ions, those abundant molecules that scientists claim enhance moods much like love.
Negative ions are produced near water, like streams, waterfalls and oceans, and at the mountains as the air molecules burst open in sunlight to improve our well-being.
Kathleen Scavone, M.A., is a retired educator, potter, writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora, and Fauna Tour of a California State Park” and “Native Americans of Lake County.” She also writes for NASA and JPL as one of their “Solar System Ambassadors.” She was selected “Lake County Teacher of the Year, 1998-99” by the Lake County Office of Education, and chosen as one of 10 state finalists the same year by the California Department of Education.
The Living Landscape: The amazing elixir – water
- Kathleen Scavone
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