William Marvel [11/27/2006]

By William Marvel

This is usually the time of year when I worry about my water supply. The spring on this property has supplied water to at least three successive houses since about 1788, and supplied it in abundance. During the height of the drought in the summer of 1963, several families from farther down Davis Hill came here daily to draw a supply for cooking and drinking, and we never came close to running out.Then, in the mid-1970s, there came a spate of well-drilling as a few other houses sprang up. Because of the notorious scarcity of water on this hill, some people had to drill several deep shafts before finding adequate water. As we were cleaning up after the Thanksgiving dinner of 1977, not long after the deepest of those wells was completed, our kitchen tap gave a wheeze like the last gasp of a dying chain-smoker and, for the first time in nearly two centuries, the water on this spot stopped running.It turned out that three feet of water still remained in the springhouse. We had only to drop the strainer a foot below the level it had occupied since 1928, prime the pump, and we were back in businessfor a while. The water level had never sunk that low before, and during long dry spells thereafter we always had to monitor the depth.A particularly dry season befell us in the summer and fall of 2001. Once, while I was away, the water dropped low enough that the line again started drawing air, and by the time I returned home the pump had burned out. The plumber dropped the strainer another foot deeper, but that was the limit of the flexible hose that my father buried with a pick and shovel back in 1955. My vigilance redoubled after that, and on Halloween morning I found the spring once more about to drop below the screened mouth of the line, whereupon I climbed down into the cistern, dropped the strainer into a bucket of water to preserve the suction, and shut off the pump.I remained without running water for 52 days, until December 21, when the falling leaves finally allowed the water table to recover sufficiently. By dint of conservation and a daily trip to the pumping station on River Road I avoided any serious consideration of digging a new well, but since that time hardly a week has passed in which I fail to amble the hundred yards or so down to the springhouse and plunge a notched pole into the water. At six feet the spring is full; at three feet I begin to worry, and at one foot I would be out of water. That hasnt happened again, but Ive done a lot of worrying.This year there hasnt been much to fret over. Torrents of rain remind me every few days that I still havent succeeded in plugging the leak at my fathers ill-designed junction of two porch roofs. Even the cars have shown evidence of seepage during this seasons monsoons, and ferns are starting to grow between the ruts in the driveway. I no longer have to make the trek to the springhouse to check the water: now I just open the cellar door, throw a cat down, and gauge the depth by the how long it takes before I hear the splash.In the wake of the electoral rebuke to George Bush I often think now of the French autocrat who reputedly predicted that after him would come the deluge. Considering the legend more literally than metaphorically, it seems as though we are about to emerge from another antediluvian period to face some horrible retribution.In fact, our sodden year does reflect an early instance of natures vengeance. So do the mild temperatures of a season that usually prompts long underwear and woolen socks. The dire predictions of mankinds influence on climate change prove correct, one by one, but denial still fuels our global demise. Our end could be recorded in a single sentence on some crumbling concrete wall, to stand like a Rosetta Stone for our entire planet after the last sentient creature has perished. "This was the warming from all of the cars that melted the ice that drenched all the people who had all the children who craved all the stuff that filled up the houses that needed the power to work all the wells that used up the water and killed the whole planet."This Christmas, give the gift of a healthy Earth. Buy nothing. William Marvel lives in South Conway.