The Life Force of Water

Drinking straight from "The Well of Souls"; High Falls, NY

I cannot describe the simple joy that it brings me to drink fresh live water from the Earth. There’s nothing quite like it. It vibrates through your whole being, it quite literally feels alive. It is full of life force energy radiating through Mother Earth’s medicine.

I remember reading a passage from Stephen Harrod Buhner’s book The Lost Language of Plants a few years ago about his first taste of water straight from a river and thinking to myself that I wish I could live that way. His words planted a seed of awareness in me that it took me until now to fully understand.

He describes the beauty of his first sip of wild water from his great-grandfather’s hands with such simple language that it captures what an innate human experience it is to drink from the Earth: “I remember the translucency of that water, the tiny particles of dirt floating in its depths, and below it all his life written in the palm of his hand. The water was sweet and cooling; my body liked it”.

I remember reading this and feeling the water in my own two hands, feeling it’s coolness run through my body, feeding that very basic human urge to be able to dip our hands into wild, running water and sip it. Nonetheless, it took me years of understanding before I trusted myself and the Earth enough to be able to this very thing: before I returned to the wild waters.