Water In Abundance

Okay, my pending trip back to the islands is very much on my mind right now.  

I even went to Weather.com and took a peek at the weather there.  It’s (predictably) 82 degrees with cooling  winds from SSE.  I can feel it and hear the wind rustling through the palms already…

But I then took a look at the 10-day forecast and they are expecting rain and/or showers all next week.  And of course, being me, that got me thinking.

If you know anything about the islands, you will know that we lived off of rain water.  Your only water supply is the water you catch off your roof.  

And instead of running down a gutter and into the drain as it does here stateside, it runs down into a cistern below the house.  Every house had, instead of a basement, a huge basement-like structure that only holds water.  And that water is what you use to drink, cook, shower, etc.

Whenever someone in the house flushes a toilet, or turns on a faucet or a shower, you hear the electric water pump start up down in the pump house.  And in drought years, you worry every time you hear that pump come on.

But in rainy seasons, one doesn’t think about water too much.  It just is given to you as a gift from the heavens.

Those big, beautiful, cumulus clouds that you so seldom see here in California float in from the east and sprinkle us with rain and then move on.  I just love the sight of them – so lofty and dimensional and individually unique.

I talked to my brother (who lives down there) just this afternoon, and he said they could use the rain.  The lush green is turning into drier, thinner growth – especially on the dry east end of the island, where we lived as children.

The islands historically seem to go in a seven-year cycle – or they did when I lived there.  

Years of drier and drier seasons, and then they’d swing the other way, so that everything becomes lush and abundantly green again. 

On the west end where the ‘mountains’ are taller, they catch a lot more rain.  So the vegetation there is just naturally greener. 

They even have different types of vegetation in the west than out on the east end of the island - even though the whole island is less than 30 miles long.

But I digress.  

I was going to say that I remember well the leaner, drier years.  Times got very tough.  When rainfall lessened on the island, it did it at an exponentially harsher degree out on the east end.

When water got scarce, you had to really cut back and conserve, and check the water level in the cistern religiously.  In the southeast corner of the living room’s tile floor was a brass screw about an inch and a half in diameter.

One would unscrew this by hand (or with pliers if the last person to check was overly zealous) and it would expose a hole about an inch in diameter leading down into blackness.

 

Then you’d reach up to the hook hidden on the side of the tall bookcase and take down the measuring gauge.  This was very high tech; a lead fishing weight tied to the end of a very long, cotton string.

And you’d then lower the weight slowly through the brass-threaded hole in the floor, carefully feeding it out, hand over hand, inch by inch as it went farther, feeling for the moment when it finally hit the bottom of the cistern.

Then you’d pull it back out, feeling down the length of the cotton string until it was wet.  And that would tell you how many feet of water you had left.

In drier years, you’d watch and measure anxiously as the wet part of the string became shorter and shorter.  And slowly you’d cut back on things.  Only shower and wash the dishes every other day.  Or shower down at the yacht club if you had to do it in between.

Only flush toilets once a day.  Or if necessary, haul up buckets of sea water to flush them.  (I always wondered – even at that young age – if there couldn’t be a way to pump water up from the ocean for things like that, but never invented such a system myself.)

And when the drought got really bad and one ran out of water… well…that was really bad.  No, we didn’t just die of dehydration, though at times it seemed almost preferable.  

Instead, the meager budget providing, we’d have to buy water from the Schusters or the Lindquists – the two families who were in the water business.

If you had enough money (which we usually didn’t), you could buy actual rain water – at a high premium.  And they’d send out the water truck with its large cylindrical body and pump the gallons – thousands at a time – into the overflow drain of the cistern.

This was quite an event, and we’d all stand around in awe.  It was an exciting thing for the water truck to come.  Even though you knew it meant the family budget would have to be cut elsewhere.

But more likely than not, there would be no money in the budget for rain water, and we’d have to order the much inferior, much dreaded well water.  Now a good portion of American population lives off of well water and probably can’t understand the dread and stigma that both came with buying well water.

But on the island, it meant you’d reached the bottom of the bottom – at least that’s what I thought as a child.  

For the water table and aquifer (the level of water under the earth’s surface) on the islands is very shallow.  The tallest mountain on the island is something like 1,300 feet, with most of the island being significantly lower and the average height above sea level probably averaging a hundred feet or less.

This means that underground water is in very close proximity to the briny water beneath the island.  And thus, well water has a very nasty, brackish taste – and even smell.  You’d almost hate to flush your toilet with it (so strong did it smell), let alone drink it.  I remember having to hold my nose to drink it.

But thank goodness, in time the pendulum would eventually swing the other way and lean, dry years would pass into years of plenty and lushness.  (Although it’s strange that I really don’t remember long periods of rainy days…)

Then, there would be plenty of green grass to feed the horses, and water to flush toilets.  

You needn’t even bother having to unscrew the brass fixture to measure water levels.  Water was plentiful.

 I remember, especially well, the day that our cistern actually overflowed.

 Our house, as are probably the majority on the island, was built on a slope.  So the entrance to the house was actually at the back of the house.  

In our case it was at the back of the house and opened into a large, central walled courtyard which housed a lime tree, a mango tree, a pond, poinsettias and jasmine, among other things.

Bedrooms and bathrooms opened onto the courtyard on both the east and west sides, and the main part of the house made up the north side, overlooking the ocean. 

The kitchen, large dining room and living room stretched out, end to end, with floor to ceiling windows to allow the incredible ocean view, and a wall to wall bank of louvered doors that opened onto the courtyard.

And because our house was built on a hill, and had the entrance at the back, the balcony at the front of the house (facing the ocean) was a good ten to twelve feet off the ground. 

And beneath the balcony was the exposed north wall of the cistern (the south side of the cistern being completely underground.)

High up on that wall – just under the balcony – two five-inch pipes protruded, covered with a wire mesh screen to keep out bugs.  These were the overflow pipes, which I always thought a ridiculous thing.

We spent a good portion of our seasons fretting over how much of that cotton string would be wet.  The thought of too much water was impossible to fathom!

But eventually one year, the pendulum actually did indeed swing far enough the other way. 

I can remember it clearly – or at least a small portion of it.

I stood on the balcony, in the safety of the overhanging roof,

protected from the SSE winds and slanting rain by the house.  I enjoyed watching the changing patterns of the rain falling heavily on the ocean.

 

Heavier in places, lighter in others, it created a swirling, dancing ballet of  movement.  Large splatters and small splatters and tiny peanut butter cookie ripples across the grey water where gusts of wind passed over.

And as I stood mesmerized by the rainy display, I suddenly heard the sound of heavily running water outside the house.  My first thought was that someone had turned on a hose and left it running.  My initial reaction was to run and turn off the water.  You just never let water run wastefully.  Ever.  

Always conserve.  Always be frugal.  It was tatooed into my brain.

But then it dawned on me that the sound of running water came from below me, out of sight beneath the wide balcony.  And there was no faucet down below.  I could not fathom what caused the sound.

 

So I ran down the steps at the south east corner of the balcony and down the stepping stones to the front of the house.  And the sight before me just thrilled me like I’d never been thrilled before.  This was better than Santa and a new bike and Disneyland all wrapped up in one.

For spouting from those two unnecessary drain pipes flowed gallons upon gallons upon gallons of fresh, uncontainable rain water!

I ran up the stepping stone path shouting excitedly to tell the others.  We all donned our bathing suits and hurried back down the path.  And there we ran in and out of the twin waterfalls, pushing and shoving each other and squealing with joy; rejoicing in an overabundance of rain.  

We played and splashed and giggled at the unbelievable, unrestrainable overflow of the life-giving wealth, until the rain stopped and the overflow slowed to a trickle and then came to a stop.

And I knew, for the first time, the feeling of being full and fearless.  Of being full to the point of overflowing.  And even all of these years later, I can feel elation at the thought.

So often the biggest blessings in our lives are disguised in the mundane, unremarkable things we take for granted.  So I learn over and over again, to open my eyes and be blessed.


Liz Carson Rosas
19 February 2010

You anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.                     Psalm 23:5

May the God of hope fill you with all

joy and peace as you trust in him,

so that you may overflow with hope

by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

                                                  Romans 15:13

Let my teaching fall like rain

and my words descend like dew,

like showers on new grass,

like abundant rain on tender plants.

I will proclaim the name of the LORD.

Oh, praise the greatness of our God!

                                                  Deuteronomy 32:2,3

The grace of our Lord was poured out on me 
abundantly, along with the faith and love 
that are in Christ Jesus.

                                                       I Timothy 1:14