The young man was very personable as he delivered the message. “We are so sorry for the inconvenience,” he said, “but it can’t be helped.” I actually could have listened to him talk for much longer, as he had the most delightful Irish accent. When I commented on it, he said, “Yes, I’m very far from home.” I thanked him for his efforts then came back inside to start filling buckets and pans with water in anticipation of the city turning it off to repair a main pipe nearby.

It’s not like I haven’t been down this road before. Having lived in Lyman for a number of years before moving to Saco, I was well-acquainted with being without H2O anytime the power went off. When your well is powered by an electric pump, not only do the lights go out, but you also cannot do dishes, take a shower, wash clothes, or flush a toilet.

Back then, I was always ready, or as much as possible, with jugs of water and a rain barrel. I remember being able to wash my hair in the sink using less than a gallon of it and keeping a kettle going on the wood stove all day for any task requiring hot water. Losing your source of water means that you have no choice but to learn how to make do with very little, and you’d surprised how far a gallon can go if you’re really judicious with it! It’s a lot like camping out, only done indoors and in the questionable “comfort” of home. Not until we are deprived of something do we realize its importance, and nothing is more crucial than a reliable source of water.

While we are decidedly inconvenienced when turning a faucet on produces nothing but a rush of air, there are far greater implications when our environment experiences a shortage of water. According to the latest data, Maine was at the time still in the throes of a severe drought. Most of use, however, never make the connection between a shortage of rain and how that affects us, not the least of which has to do the price of groceries.

All plants, including those that produce the vegetables, fruits and grains we consume, need a certain amount of hydration to grow and thrive. Without it, those crops don’t do well, often forcing growers to resort to irrigation or even digging new wells, which drives costs up. So if that bunch of celery or those green beans at the supermarket are more expensive this month than they might have been last month, it’s most likely because they were grown by a farmer who had to spend more on water to keep the crop going long enough to get them to market.

We’ve all seen or heard of the devastation on the west coast from forest and brush fires that consume millions of acres of trees and other ecologically important vegetation due to the devastation wrought by prolonged droughts. In areas that depend on a lumber industry, jobs are lost when there is less of it to cut, and even furniture made from what wood remains commands a higher price. In short, the effects of a lack of water on our environment can be devastating, far-reaching, and impact us in too many ways to list here.

So, during my recent deprivation, I looked a bit differently at those jugs and pans of water sitting on my kitchen counters. When I heard the familiar gurgling in the pipes at some point later that day signaling that I was back in business, I couldn’t bring myself to pour all that water out. I used it to rinse dishes off, watered a couple of plants I still had outside, and cooked a few vegetables with it. It might not have made much difference on a grander scale, but it called to mind a story I’d heard about a church missionary who was reprimanded by the townspeople for washing her hands in a barrel of water that had been carried in from miles away. That water was more precious than gold to them. It was what they drank from, and now, she had contaminated it, and her remorse knew no bounds.

A foreign concept to one so used to just turning on a tap and thinking nothing of it and who will most likely never be reduced to that type of hardship. Yet it gave me pause, and there was something oddly redeeming about making sure that I didn’t waste any of the water in those kettles and jugs. As my mother would have said, “It’s the principle of the thing.”

And she would have been right. It was.

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