Water, Water Everywhere

Yesterday, I caught myself carrying a basin of water outside to the garden. Half the way across the kitchen, I realized what I was doing and stopped: I'd used the water to wash rice, but I didn't want to just dump it. But I had to. I walked over to the sink and poured out the water, gritting my teeth at the waste.

I don't need to save water anymore and it feels so weird.

Over the last two years, I've grown used to recycling the water I've washed rice and vegetables with. In our bathroom in North Cyprus, I had two large tubs of water saved from running the tap until the right temperature was achieved. When they got full, I mopped the floor with the water, watered my herbs with it, or used it to launder clothes, pouring it right into the washing machine.

Everybody conserves water in Cyprus -- you have to. Everywhere you go, you see air conditioning units with receptacles under them so as not to waste even the smallest bit of runoff, bowls carefully placed under leaky hoses, trays put out to catch rainwater. In Turkey too, we saw birds and animals drinking from air conditioning pipes; dry fields where the only green was the weeds growing in patches under leaky pipes.

In Cyprus, everything is dry as dust in the summertime. Root systems grow incredibly deep to tap what water there is; only the hardiest, most drought-resistant plants and trees can survive. We got used to seeing trucks delivering water, used to taking two-minute showers, used to turning the water off when we brushed our teeth or washed our faces. For one memorable weekend in November when we ran out of water, we got used to going to the local swimming pool every evening so that we could at least wash our feet. We stopped going to the tap to fill our glasses too: the water from our faucets was nasty-tasting stuff. We got used to hanging our clothes outside and being able to take them in almost immediately, bone dry. In all the time we lived in Cyprus, I never once saw a clothes drier in anyone's house.

In Scotland, water is completely taken for granted. When it rains, which is almost every day, water pours off rooftops and gushes into gutters. If it isn't rainy, it's cloudy and there is often mist. The ground is soon saturated. It rains so much, everything is generally damp almost all the time. Moss grows lush and thick in gardens, weeds go on a rampage, spreading far and wide, and grass grows so fast you can almost hear it. Everything in Scotland is green. On the rare days when the sun comes out, everyone hurries into their gardens to peg out laundry. You get used to hanging your sheets and towels out, then racing outside to take them back in when it starts raining. Two years ago, I often had to do this two or three times a week. Our neighbors, an ecologically-minded couple with a newborn baby, ended up giving up and buying a clothes drier. I could hardly blame them.

I grew up in Riverside, California, a hot, dry place. In Riverside, just as in Cyprus, we hoarded water and we respected it. In Scotland, you can't walk half a mile without finding some body of water: a bog, a stream, a pond, a river, a loch, or the sea, but in Riverside, where even a burst sewer main can be refreshing, you can go a long way to find a puddle. The joke of Riverside is that it not really beside a river. Actually, the Santa Ana River used to flow through Riverside, but nowadays you are hard put to see even the merest trickle where it used to be. When I was a child, my sisters and I used to love going to see the 'river' after a long, hard rain. It was thrilling to see a foot or two of muddy water snaking its way through the huge, parched river bed.

Here in Scotland, I've got one river practically in my backyard and another a stone's throw away from our house. Both are deep, full at all times, and lined by grassy banks and moss-covered trees. There are times I try to picture my childhood self gazing with longing at this green, wet world I now live in. Two years ago, I was beginning to take all the rain for granted myself, but after two years in Cyprus, I'm back to my Southern Californian water worshiping status.

I wonder how long it will take me to stop hoarding water?