Today I sat down to my lunch with the April 2010 issue of National Geographic magazine in front of me, fresh from my mailbox. This month’s magazine is devoted to water—it’s beauty, life-sustaining power, spiritual force, and most importantly, its shortages. If you don’t already subscribe, find a copy at your nearest bookstore or browse the issue online. It’s well worth the read.
National Geographic takes a global approach to water in this issue, focusing on shrinking Himalayan glaciers, East African drought, a 20-acre swimming pool in Chile, and California’s heavily plumbed and piped water system. As I flipped through the pages, the evocative photography brought me face-to-face with a Kenyan woman lifting a bucket of murky water out of a drying well. A map of the earth’s continents showed me how much consumers pay for their water: in San Diego, $1.65 per 100 gallons, in Bangalore, only six cents. Pages of facts interspersed between articles told me that “the weight of the Three Gorges Reservoir will tilt the earth’s axis by nearly an inch.” Wow.
In the article, “California’s Pipe Dream,” I spotted Mono Lake, tiny and blue on a diagram of the state’s plumbing. Mono Lake, connected to Los Angeles by 350 miles of aqueduct, is a microcosm of the entire world. We are all connected to each other through our thirst, through the twists of our wrists as we turn the tap on and off, through our bodies that are made of 75 percent water. I felt overwhelmed as I walked back to work, but more determined than ever to make sure this little bit of salty water stays healthy, keeps rising, and sustains all who rely upon it.