Water Works

“…Water, water, everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink. …”

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Ah, it’s summertime in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.  A glorious time of year!

But, the summer sun is oddly elusive this season.  There has been so much rain that the normally scorched earth by mid August has stayed verdant green right up to our September Labor Day when it rained “buckets” again.   And tomorrow it will pour since we are now in a so called trough.  And so it will be into the next day and possibly the next.

Yes, we are continually surrounded by driving rain and enough falling water to float Noah for 40 more days and nights.  And yet, there is nothing to drink in our tucked away cottage on the edge of an enchanted forest.   And we must improvise since our water pump just decided to quit.

Wasn’t the Derecho Enough?

Our Enchanted Forest
After the Derecho

Wasn’t it bad enough we went through the Derecho storm just a few weeks ago and were without power for five days? We were waterless then too but a generator magically produced enough for survival.  But wasn’t that evil storm sufficient to remind us of the perils in country living?   Now here we are again hauling in buckets of that life giving fluid.   It didn’t rain enough buckets today for flushing you-know-what.  I suppose I am too old to actually say “toilets.”   There are limits to the tawdry use of language.  I do wonder why “toilet-water” is acceptable though.  I am talking about real toilet-water here of course…. the kind you flush!

Anyway, this fine wet Labor Day morning I scoured our home improvement store for large portable empty containers to hold water at the ready for the above embarrassing purpose.  No one in the store ever heard of large water containers.

I then stumbled around town trying to word my request in an understandable way. “Do you know where I can find large containers to hold water?  Our water pump gave up and we want to bring in water from the rain or the neighbors or a pool.”   Would you believe I got blank looks at this question?  Is there a clearer way to word it?  Eventually I was miraculously led to the camping department in Walmart, where there were exactly two 6-gallon storage containers available.  Hurrah!  They are now sold out.  I suppose I was lucky at that since if the super store ever had any inventory of containers, they probably sold down to these two during the Derecho.

Forget Labor on Labor Day

It’s Labor Day where I live.  My calls to Pump people and the local Farmer’s Cooperative ring and ring even as I yell into the receiver, “Pick Up PLEASE!”  Maybe if I had sent them a Happy Labor Day card, they might have remained open?  I tend to blame myself for failure – anybody’s failure.

There is one good thing to come of all this water loss in the midst of deluge, and that is, we are, at long last, getting used to surviving in the country.  And we have lived here for 24 years.  I actually saved a bunch of survival tips in a book since I expected a pandemic a year or so ago.  If you have any questions, I will be glad to share.   Here are some of my Water Tips.

You can drain your car radiator for water – if you can figure out where the radiator is.

The water in your you-know-what tank is actually clean and can be used for drinking – I think.   I hope.

You can sterilize the you-know-what water or creek water with drops of bleach – I have forgotten how many drops to how much water.  I think it was three drops per gallon.

You can boil creek water – I am not sure for how long or where the creek is.

You should have cans of peaches available for the liquid – why wouldn’t pears do?

There should be a gallon of water for each per person per day for drinking and cleansing.

I have a whole lot of other tips in a book I created to get ready for a pandemic that never arrived.  One tip I do remember is to put a chain across your road and a sign that says “Beware – Flu Here” even if you are perfectly healthy.

I will keep you posted on the water problem at my place and whether or not we resorted to sterilizing the water in the you-know-what!

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