by Tim

Let’s call it Water instead of Colombia. Will you humor me for the duration of this piece and agree to call the land that the villain Columbus never even set eyes on Water? 

This country, now named Water, has all forms of H2O – ocean water, tidal water, river water, waterfalls, swamp water, glacier water, water pulled by roots and through plant vasculature, water pushing fungal hyphae through soil, cloud water, water always falling from the sky, water bubbling up from springs, small water becoming big water, becoming Amazon water. 

Toxic water, cool water, hot water, medicine water. 

Cleansing water, pooling water, murky water, floodwater, healing water. 

There are many ways to honor and celebrate water. One way is to not poison her with poop, pesticides, pills, phthalates, PFAS, and other petrochemicals. Another is to not dam her, damnit: demanding, defending her right to descend and decrying any disruptions. Another way, far different from those important holding actions, is to call her name. Call her name when you see her as she tumbles over rocks or pushes and pulls herself against the shore – in song, and in prayer. And listen to her. Our preferred way is to lay on our backs, floating fancifully and tracing the green of the forest canopy above the canyon while feeling her unguarded embrace from below.

Have you heard of the theory that all life is just water’s way to carry itself around? Humans are 70 percent water. Even a human looking for water in the desert is trillions of little water sacks contained in a human form. Water looking for itself. Trees spend most of their time transporting water and evaporating water into the sky with clouds coalescing just as our thoughts coalesce and then dissipate. As I sat in ceremony one night with a Cofan elder, the rain came in a sheet. More water than air, deafening. At that moment, with  water pouring out of my eyes, sweating through my pores, and projecting out of my mouth, I had one thought – of course it is all water.

If om or boom was the first sound, the very next may have been a “wa”. A wet and wailing wawa, the colloquial Spanish name for “baby”. A shlosh, splosh, splish, splash. Water, agua, the words themselves containing the slippery sonic sensuality of the sea. As nascent life waddled into form 4 billion years ago,  the womb of grandmother ocean, Abuela Mar, contained all the hopes and ambitions of this new emergence. I don’t agree with the idea that life came from water. Life is water. Water is life. Colombia is Water.