"I began asking friends if they had any memorable experiences with water. I was surprised by the blank looks I got. Like almost everyone else, ordinarily my relationship with water was unremarkable--like our relationship with air and sunshine. If instead, I'd started asking people, "Do you have any really memorable experiences of breathing air?" I'd probably have gotten even stranger looks. I have to laugh, even thinking about it. But we all have deep, buried memories when our earlier contacts with water were still full of wonder and some inexpressible meaning." In the following piece, Richard Whittaker offers glimpses into his own memories of water, and evokes the personal, as well as the profoundly universal aspects of this elemental force.
