While reading through the various new posts from today, it’s becoming evident that people hold strong emotional attachments to the bodies of water by which they live. In reflection on the James, Lauren, George and Abbie are all brought back nostalgically to their homes and the bodies of water with which they hold dear to their hearts. I love the passage Lauren pulls from Shannon’s blog, which states something similar to what I’ve said, then offers her explanation for why this seems to hold truth so universally. It is undeniable that water’s paradoxical ephemeral nature and infinite cycling inspires wonder in humans. And water’s unique utilitarian and aesthetic qualities have kept it entangled with human life throughout history. To try to understand why water vexes us so, I felt a need to consider where I come from and the water that runs through it.
I have spent most of my life in a Seattle suburb called Issaquah. I’ve always loved my city because it rests between an enormous lake and the mountains; twenty minutes from the Puget Sound, ten from Lake Washington, and saturated through and through with creeks and ponds. I suppose this is the advantage of endless rain. My city is locally famous for our annual Salmon Days Festival, as throughout the Fall our town’s streams are filled with anadromous fish at the end of their migration and our streets with the smell of their decay. I’ve always loved the festival, and out of sentimentality, the putrid smell it’s held in. It’s something about salmon returning to my creeks – the creeks I feel I was born from – something about returning to the creeks they call home despite a life away. I guess it gave me a sense of permanence, because no matter where I end up, those flowing streams of water and their salmon inhabitants will always be there.
Of course, all it takes is a little geography lesson to know that this isn’t entirely true. Not only are rivers naturally shifting constantly, they are also easily subject to human destruction and manipulation. The construction of dams quite literally destroys river’s entire ecological system, including the migration of my salmon friends. And all the pollutants we enter into our environment find their way into those creeks, into those salmon. These pollutants are then carried by the fish and the streams into my lovely Lake Sammamish, then the great Lake Washington, and finally out to the salty Puget Sound. I guess it frightens me to realize that my neighborhood, nestled in a woody mountain overlooking the Issaquah Valley, is directly responsible for the heath of my watershed. It frightens me to realize that my quaint little neighborhood, which prides itself on its environmentally-conscious development, is unconsciously responsible for the health of it’s city’s pride. I really like the idea of defining an area by its water shed divisions, because at the end of the day (regardless of any sort of arbitrary political or cultural divide), we are directly connected through the water we share. I think I feel tied to the water around Issaquah because I know its means of recreational and practical use have birthed and shaped my identity at almost every level, but also because I know that the way I live my life is tied directly to that water’s health and permanence.
I suppose, as we wondered in class a few weeks ago, if our scope of a watershed is expanded far enough, we all reside in one world-wide water system that unites us all.