Water Farmer Harvesting The Rain

 Water Farmer Harvests Rain...

(There's Some Ya Missed!)

Learned From a Year Without Showering
Rob Greenfield
Posted: 04/23/2014 4:23 pm EDT Updated: 04/24/2014 11:59 am EDT
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-greenfield/lessons-learned-from-a-ye_b_5200734.html

As of today it has been one year since my last shower. Yes, I know that sounds crazy and a year ago I would have agreed with you. I was a regular showering guy for the first 26 years of my life. Well, maybe not every single day, but just about.

So how does a regular showering guy end up going 365 days and counting without taking a shower? It started with a long bike ride across America to promote sustainability and eco-friendly living. I set a bunch of rules for myself to follow to lead by example. The rule for water was that I could only harvest it from natural sources such as lakes, rivers and rain or from wasted sources such as leaky faucets. And I kept track of exactly how much I used too, with an aim of showing just how little we need to get by...

Mr. Greenfield seemed to be always by a lake or reservoir or stream or creek or rill or a leaky faucet, where he could either immerse himself or "harvest" water.
I'm not sure I like this use of "harvest". I mean, "harvest" always meant gathering in the autumn the fruits of long arduous work in spring and summer, not some adventitious stumbling upon something.

I think this is one of the dumbest articles I have ever read recently, and that includes articles about gun anarchists and Sean Hannity.
It seems like an excuse to show off his buff body to earth mother type chicks. There is too much beefcake. If he had taken showers like normal people, he would not have to caper for nude selfies.

He does make some points that I concur with:

But I learned that by living naturally I didn't need cosmetic products anymore. I just used some soap, toothpaste and essential oils and found that to work real well. This compared to previously using colognes, deodorant, shampoo, lotions and all sorts of other products full of chemicals. And guess what? I had no lack of friends!

Personally, I think it is sufficient to say that those colognes, deodorants, etc., are filled with the most atrocious chemical scents. I am sure you have probably experienced the anguish of working out at the gym in proximity to someone who thinks themselves in need of large doses of scent that make you gag.
And this includes laundry detergents. I have had to throw away clothes my mother had washed, merely because I could not get rid of the "fresh sunshine" smell of her laundry soap.

He adds some agenda (things to do):
-Flush the toilet less often.
-Take shorter showers or turn off the water while you're soaping up and scrubbing down.
-Wash clothes less and in full loads
-Turn off the faucet
-Wash the dishes efficiently.
-Install water efficient showerheads and toilets.
-Get your leaks fixed.
-Grow food not lawns.
-Harvest rain.

Good luck on that first one and getting me to visit your place... your digs are probably a cosmetic and olfactory disaster.

And you collect rain, you don't harvest it. I suppose if you had a biplane and ran a crop dusting and rain cloud seeding  operation you could harvest rain.

And I did start taking Navy showers (the second item in the list) about 3 months ago, so I can't argue there.

--

Ray Bradbury and I

 

The Sunken Pier at Glen Harbor, Michigan

We spent our youths on the shores of lakes and rivers, Bradbury in Waukegan on Lake Michigan and I in Michigan on Lake St. Clair and the St. Clair River.

There is some quiet and subliminal effect of water, flowing, moving, breaking on the shore, or carrying the great storm clouds from the west on its mighty back towards you standing expectantly for hours on the shore, as Lake Michigan does in Empire, Michigan - or in Glen Harbor north of the massive sand dunes where the waves lap the ancient piers and the wind blows sand into your eyes.
(refer to Google Earth  45 degrees 54' 22  86" N / 86 degrees 01'30 45 W  for the ancient piers.)

The interior of the country is oppressive; it is a place where change happens with the slow speed of creeks drying up in the summer and the mud cracking wider and wider. The interior is a land from which water escapes and flows away, and everything runs! Runs at the proverbial speed hydrological, which in our hearts is far faster than the speed of light.

My friend was going to go golfing at a place called Canadian Lakes. It certainly sounded great to me, and I was just a bit envious. But when I looked it up in Google Earth, I discovered it was not in Canada at all, and was furthermore in the middle of the Michigan; it consisted of some landlocked lakes throttled by houses and golf courses.
I was no longer jealous.
Golfing in the prison of land stretching as far as the eye can see - with a few spitoons of lake - is not comparable to golfing at a place, like Antrim Dells, where one starts high on the hills near Lake Michigan and drives down a fairway descending into the deciduous forests of autumn... and no matter how dense the foliage and how deep the declivity, one is never far from the life-giving wind off the lake. The only thing better would be the additional salt on your tongue from a sea breeze.

Water has formed our lives.
The impetuous transformations of water and air forced the minds of Bradbury and myself to the vast, foamy, and quick reaches of imagination.
--