The Invisibility of Water

by The Pike School Upper School Science teacher Tina Morris

…water has achieved an invisibility in our lives that is only more remarkable given how central it is. Water used to be part of the rhythm and motivation of daily life, and there are plenty of places, including farms and whole swaths of the developing world, where it still is. ~Charles Fishman

Living on a farm has made me acutely conscious of weather patterns. While the BIG SNOW in the winter of 2015 meant inconvenience to our neighbors and friends, to us it meant 4 AM shoveling and hauling gallons of water to animals, discovering muscles in places we didn’t even know existed! This summer, however, our dependence on the vagaries of Mother Nature became even more palpable.

Without rain, our pond dried up in early July, leaving our geriatric Scottish Highland cows, Thelma and Louise, without a way to cool down. Endowed with shaggy fur and adapted to the cool, wet highlands of Scotland, the old girls at 23 years old couldn’t seek refuge from the heat by standing chest deep in their pond as had been their worry in prior summers. Helpless, they had to settle for shade under the trees which, sadly, was not enough; Thelma died in early August, the combination of age and heat stress having proved to be too much. Images of last year’s Texas drought and its devastating effect on cattle ranchers became all too real.
Wildlife is also affected by prolonged droughts as wetland species struggle to find new homes, insect-eating birds and bats have less food in dry weather, and changing migration patterns and reproductive cycles wreak havoc on animals’ life spans.

Last June, I was asked to come up with a sustainability book for faculty for our summer reading project on Global and Personal Awareness. It took only a minute to settle on a topic, for whenever I consider sustainability on a global level, it always comes down to water. No other resource impacts people in every country, in every culture, and at every socio-economic level more significantly. I settled on The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman, which, although hardly a beach read, did educate us about what we will be facing in the next century and how other countries might have to serve as role models for us in an unusual turn of the tables.

When we consider the issue of water, the U.S. is lagging behind most other parts of the globe. That sounds inconceivable until we consider, not the quantity of the resource itself, but our society’s recognition that this is our most critical environmental problem. Even Canada, our neighbor to the north, which is far more endowed with water than we are, is putting plans in place to address their future of water consumption. They are also peeking over their southern shoulder, wondering when we Americans will seek to solve our own problems by “borrowing” from them.

While we in the Pike community are still able to turn on the tap with a positive result, several towns to our east that depend on the Ipswich River for their water supply are experiencing a dying resource, dry wells, and mandatory water bans. Andover and North Andover take their water from reservoirs within their town boundaries but have also had to request voluntary watering restrictions. Climate scientists agree that this is just the beginning of what could become a long-term problem.

The hardships endured by other countries, where water sources can be miles from villages, or too contaminated to drink, seem remote to us. The impact this has on women and girls, the designated water bearers, is of world-wide concern. In the U.S., we have always had clean water at our fingertips and are now finding we can no longer take it for granted. As educators and parents, we have a responsibility to enlighten our children that water cannot be assumed to be invisible or unlimited, for they will be the ones in the forefront of finding future solutions.

The Pike School is an independent, coed, day school for Pre-K through ninth grade in Andover, Massachusetts. Visit pikeschool.org to learn more about Pike – and visit our blog for more thought leadership. To learn more about admission to The Pike School, visit our Admission page.