I’ll keep investigating waters of the Adirondacks. Stories about what’s still wild, about what has been changed, and about what is at risk of ruin.
Water? That seems niche, one might say. But water is everywhere — and where it isn’t is also a story.
All of our greatest stories involve water. The baffling story about the punishment of Moses for bringing it out of a rock. The story about the reflective trap of Narcissus. Native American stories that focus on the turtle, straddler of water and land.
One can never step in the same river twice. (Attributed to Heraclitus.)
Ripple in still water…when there is no pebble tossed nor wind to blow. (Grateful Dead)
What goes up must come down. (Everyone.)
As the year’s closing, I’ve been thinking about the lessons taught by the concept of retention time. That’s the average time water stays in a lake or pond. Think of it as the effect before has on after.
(Calling all citizen scientists! The following is from Water Line, a weekly newsletter by Adirondack Explorer water reporter Ry Rivard.)
Late last year, I began requesting documents from the state of New York to help me understand who around the Adirondacks may be drinking potentially unsafe water.
While larger communities in the state of New York post their annual drinking water quality reports online, not all smaller communities do this.
New York is notoriously slow in responding to requests for public records. To give state officials the benefit of the doubt, it’s a big state and a lot of people want to know things about it. The other explanation is that government officials like to control information, particularly information that might scare people or make themselves look bad.
Recent Almanack Comments