by Leah Zani

Created on: September 27, 2008

I wake up with a smile that sparks my husband's laughter. The morning fog enchants me. I whisper at the window, gazing out on the glowing air, "I want to go walk in it."

Forced to live with my insufferable be-wonderment, he pushes me into clothes and then outsidemy partner is good at making me happy. He lies cozy in bed with his computer. I say as I leave the room, as if I need an excuse, "It reminds me of home. Fog is so rare in Portland!"

The air on my street shivers with my excitement. I wander, feeding on the fog like spongy mushrooms. So much water hangs around me, but I can't drink it. It feeds my soul, but not my thirst. It makes me realize that water is precious. I imagine that water shortages are the true normal for most humans. Private water companies cannot accommodate far-flung or flexible water systems that fit with the lives of most people.

I depend on tap water, but others depend on fog. Some water shortages are solved by attending to the beautiful untapped oddities of our habitats. Portland is graced with her own oddities, including mountains that purify water. Some regions use large nets, called fog collectors, to gather moisture. Like the story of Indra's net, water droplets collect on the knots in the net and the world is reflected in each droplet. (UNEP 1997; Olivier and de Rautenback 2002).

Solving the water crisis will, I think, involve creating a world wide net' of non-point-source water facilities. This would be the water equivalent of microfinancing: communities (such as famous Gaviotas in Colombia) develop their own water resources (Weisman 1999). Because we are human, an enchantment with our habitat is vital to imaginingand then, buildinga sustainable relationship locally. Curiosity and enchantment are vital parts of problem solving.

When I was a child, my curiosity overcame my urge to cry. When drying my eyes, my mother had help from Mother Nature. She would hold me at the window close enough that I could identify each raindrop as it slapped the glass. The sound soothed. Doubtless my perplexity over one of our world's most normal oddities fed my happiness as well. As the magician Merlin tells young Arthur in the musical Camelot, the cure for hardship is to "learn" (Logan 1967). The world is not enchanted with Merlin's magic. Nonetheless our own enchantments with our environments can teach us to create drinking water out of air.

1967 Logan, Joshua (director). Alan Jay Lerner (screenplay). Camelot. Warner Brothers.

2002 Olivier J., and C. J. de Rautenbach. The Implementation of Fog Water Collection Systems in South Africa. Available online www.sciencedirect.com

1997 United Nations Environmental Technology Programme. Source Book of Alternative Technologies for Freshwater Augmentation in Latin America and the Caribbean. 1.3 Fog Harvesting. Available online www.oas.org

1999 Weisman, Alan. Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World. Chelsea Green.

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