Water Essay

What is life, without water?

I think I could never live where there is no water. Oh, I have been to the desert, and it is beautiful, but in a dry, gritty way. Orange dust, and so hot you wear sandals without socks, which only lets the desert rocks try to mine your feet for the liquids they are missing. I could not spend my life there, with the hot sun soaking up any small amounts of water which find their way to such a miserably dry place.

I suppose it might not be all bad. There are thunderstorms every so often — great black clouds, then hard rain beating down on the land. A scattering of hail. But it all disapears quickly into the thirsty dust.

I feel sorry for them, the inhabitants of the deserts. In my lake, I can swim through sunrises and sunsets, bright colors rippling and sliding through the water. It is exhilirating, orange and yellow and purple all around me and in the sky above me.

In the early winter, can the desert residents slip and slide on the ice, or examine lily pads and bubbles trapped within?

How shallow their lives must be, surrounded by rock and cactus and forever blue sky! A sky without clouds becomes boring. You need clouds to rain, clouds to blow by, clouds to find shapes in, clouds to turn brilliant colors when the sun

Or those who live inland, without beaches! I live for the beach. To walk along the shore, searching for the perfect shell, or to sit with bare feet buried in sun-warmed sand, watching belugas which have come right up in the shallows, that is life! I would take a tent and live among the yellow rye grass and pale driftwood, rising each morning to watch the sun rise and light up the bay, except that I would miss my lake.

To walk in the grey rain, to dance through wet grass! To watch dewdrops catch fire as the sun hits them! To see snow-covered fields as bright as day in moonlit, sparkling nights. To leap from icy shape to icy shape, strange layered chunks of ice built up and carved out by patient winter tides. To sit, snug and warm, watching fat snowflakes fall. To scale the rocks beside a waterfall and watch the rainbows in the spray. Without water, could there be snow angels? Could you squish your toes in mud? Could you find delightful sea creatures in tidepools?

Oh, what is life, without water?