Eddies and Drains

I must have been 5, maybe 6 years old. I had just washed my hands at the bathroom sink. The water drained out. While doing so, I noted the whorl of water, the eddied whirlpool of water spinning toward the black, gaping drain hole.

It struck me. Where does the water go? And the soapy bubbles? And other things?

I wondered about that. I watched the toilet bowl drain in its now familiar spin. The bathtub, too. Each fixture with a different drain size. Each with a different purpose. Each capable of more volume.

What if the hole were large? Big enough to take a kid?

I shuddered. But then I recalled the large storm drains in the curbs. Huge openings with heavy duty grates. Big enough to take all sorts of junk washed down the street. What of bodies? People? Kids?

I shuddered again!

Once the shock subsided, I wondered more where the water goes and ends up. That began my interest in ecology, I think. Afterall, this was southern California, a land whose water came from the Colorado River hundreds of miles away. We were conditioned to conserve water. We worried about water supplies drying up. We were trained to conserve the forests, too. Smokey the Bear was our furry friend asking us to help stop all forest fires. We lived near forests. Steep slopes, too. Mountain sides that shed storm water quickly that could wash away our homes and bicycles (!).

A kid thinks of the darnedest things. Yes, I was 5 or 6 when these thoughts began. And they have never stopped. I still wonder about eddies and the direction of their whirls – clockwise or counter? I still worry about wastewater and how well we treat it. I worry about water supplies and conservation. I worry about preserving water shed on steep slopes and the threat of range fires.

Living in Illinois since 1961, I have observed water use true Californians would never allow! I watch for litter and observe scarred neighborhoods of filth and trash. I see cigarettes flipped into brush and gutters. I wonder why the Midwest hasn’t been burned up or gone dry from such wasteful behavior.

Well, it won’t burn up; we have too much water, rain, snow for that. The trash is another issue, though.

All these years later I remain a preservationist of our landscape and natural gifts of clean water, air and soil. All this began with a young kid afraid of being sucked down a drain. And the direction of the eddy.

Is this natural?

June 14, 2022

 

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