Our visitor had just arrived in the United States from South America. He had never seen snow before arriving on a day in January. As he looked out into our back yard, he laughed heartily and said, “How happy is your hard water.” I had no idea what he was talking about because I think of hard water as something that leaves mineral deposits that are difficult to remove. I had not connected joy and hard water.
I joined him at the door and saw what he was looking at. The visitor was talking about the solid state of water in the form of snow. Our “hard water” made a snowman, something our visitor could not visualize from his personal experience. Nothing could stop him from joining my daughters to make his own snowman.
Water is, indeed, a remarkable material. The design of its molecular structure allows it to dissolve other substances. This same structure allows water to hold vast amounts of heat. It also allows water to exist as a solid. Liquids like alcohol have a molecular design that does not make them nearly as good as water in these critical ways.
The most important use of water is in living things. Without water, digestion would be impossible. The control of temperature and distribution of nutrients in living things depends on the presence of water. Planet Earth controls and moderates temperatures by its use of water. Even the Earth’s ability to store massive amounts of water in polar and glacial ice depends on water’s molecular design.
My response to our visitor was that our hard water was a joy all right, but that water itself was the real joy. It’s a material designed to serve the needs of all living things and is the basis of life itself.
— John N. Clayton © 2019