There’s Something in the Water

I just turned the corner and arrived at one of my favorite writing spots. It’s one of the relatively few places here in Moorhead, Minnesota, where you can hang out by actual open water. Even if it is only a man-made lake/drainage area.

I somehow overlooked something today, though. Major miscalculation.

It’s been a hundred below zero for weeks now — today’s temperatures in the positive 30s have people dancing in the snow-covered streets — and, thus, there ain’t no water here. Not in liquid form, at any rate.

So as I pulled over in my car to park (I simply sit in the car to write during winter), the vision I had of scribbling down my thoughts while staring straight south at a lovely pond filled with geese has been replaced by the somehow surprising reality of staring at a bright white frozen desert that looks like it would be a superb site for a lunar landing.

At least I’m still facing straight south.

I need water. Everyone needs water, I know, to drink, to bathe in. Me too. But for me it goes further.

I need water to look at and be around. To experience. I need to absorb it not just into my body but into my soul. I have to be in water’s presence and have it be in mine. That’s why I came here, again, today. And that’s why I’m salvaging and savoring the small, clear patches of ice that I can see through the car window right now. I’m telling my brain: “Ice is water. Frozen water, but water just the same.”

I don’t take my water cravings nearly seriously enough, and I pay for that. When I’m not around water — when I need a water fix — I get moody and sad. I’m not naive enough to think that it’s a pure cause-and-effect phenomenon; Lord knows there are other things in my life that contribute to my moodiness and sadness. But I do know that thirst — my desire to be one with water — gets the best of me if and when I’m not paying attention.

Water is in my blood; it has to be. My mother grew up in Canada not so far from the ocean, and near the banks of the Miramichi River in New Brunswick, where she and her father frequently canoed and fished. My dad grew up in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota (keyword “Lakes”) and, with Mom, spent the enormous sum of $5,000 in 1959 to buy the lake home where my three siblings and I grew up. The lake was literally always outside my window, just steps away. I could see it, hear it, smell it. I couldn’t not.

My parents are gone now; they both died within the last 18 months. The old house is gone too, which means I can’t go home again — home to the water, or that water at least. My water.

Which means I’m very thirsty these days.

Which means I need water.

Fortunately, there’s a solution for me thanks to the Red River (keyword “River”) that flows here in Moorhead and our sister city of Fargo, North Dakota. Though the terrain in this part of the world couldn’t be flatter — sledding in winter at the man-made Fargo dike is considered the height of fun — there is somehow just enough land tilt to create a functioning river.

Which means open water, in almost any weather.

So sometime in the next 24 hours, when I have a few moments, I’ll steer my car not back to the moonscape but, instead, to north Moorhead, where the Red River swings through just a little ways from where my beautiful wife Adrianne teaches first-graders. There, I’ll get the drink I need. I’ll watch the water go by, waiting for that beautiful day in spring when I’ll be able to go back and watch the water being still, too.

Epilogue: Well, it took me 48 hours to get here, but I’m here, and the water is indeed open. I see you, old friend, and I hear you, too. Thank you for the flow.

Peter Vogt

I’m a writer. An essayist, to be more exact. I tell stories here—true stories, from my own life, in hopes they will make a positive difference in yours.

I share laughs and tears, insights and observations, frustrations and realizations, relying all the while on the storytelling wisdom of Julia Cameron, author of The Right to Write.

It is a great paradox that the more personal, focused, and specific your writing becomes, the more universally it communicates.