Preface Page #1Water Page #2 -25Shoreline Page #26-39 Wetlands Page #40-47In Full View Page #48-66About Myself Page #68Image List Page #69Large format text for electronic reading Page #71-76

All content copyright Janusz Wrobel

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CONTENTS

We are all busy with what we perceive as relevant to our lives. Keeping up with everything is impossible; it would be fair to say that we prioritize immediately relevant facts and events, and that historical and future concerns don't have much influence over us. And yet there's something outside of our lives, on the scale of time and space, which we sense is beyond our grasp - something that's revealed as deeply mysterious, when one tries to place his life in the broader tapestry of life itself.

At some point I realized that I could only survive for four weeks without food, for four days without water and for four minutes without oxygen. Although I had a good idea where my food was coming from, I would have only been concerned about water when it stopped flowing from the tap, and I had only a foggy idea where the oxygen I was breathing was coming from. I had thus stumbled across a major flaw in the way I'd prioritized the essentialities of my life. Following this realization, I discovered that the dilemma was not mine alone.

The next step for me was to look at my body as a self-contained living system that had developed over millions of years and was functioning rather well within a narrow range of conditions. Any deviance from my constant body temperature indicates something; two degrees could be painful and four degrees could mean a total system failure. To understand how and why my body worked, I had to examine it as - for lack of a better term - a vessel of aqueous solution, in which everything that is vital to me happens. With water comprising 60% of my body weight and 80% of my brain, all the cells in my body developed and can properly function in it, because water is the conduit for nutrient delivery, neuronal messaging, heat storage and energy distribution, as well as a means of waste disposal. My body is also involved in a symbiotic relationship with thousands of water-living species that help it digest food, extract nutrients and produce the countless molecular components that it needs to function properly. This relationship only works well when my body provides conditions that are stable enough to host these organisms.

This interpretation of the human body as a living system led me to look for similarities between it and living systems of a larger scale. I effectively found myself looking for patterns of life that would allow me to place my own life within a much broader context. The environment of the Niagara Escarpment, where I reside, offered me viable cues, and it became the subject of my observation as it recovered from the obliteration of its vegetation—in favour of farmland — that occurred decades ago. The Canadian Shield is my Petri dish, permitting clear and transparent observation of the life that forms on its surface.

This book is the compendium of evidence gathered there. It has become the basis for my own conclusions, and we may each derive different conclusions from the same evidence. Curiosity, a trait common to all human beings, reveals itself best at the water's edge. I invite you to walk there.

Canada may be more defined by water than any other country. With the Great Lakes containing one-fifth of the planet’s fresh surface water alone, and as many lakes as the rest of the world, this country offers the best opportunity to observe how water defines our planet.

“Water is Life” may be the most frequently expressed axiom in the history of mankind, and it simply summarizes not only the origin of life, but also its prerequisite. The enduring civilizations in our history were built and maintained around the principle of equitable access to water. The industrial revolution started the process of water commoditization. The warming of our planet started affecting its distribution.

Everything in life, from the cellular level of my body to the continental scale of environmental processes, evolved from, and depends on, one specific physical property of water: its heat capacity. It has one of the highest of all materials, in all three of its states. This is what stabilizes living systems — as well as my body — in their range of inborn temperature requirements. This property also makes liquid and vaporized water the best mediums for energy transfer in the power generation industry, as well as in the formation of climate conditions of all possible scales. The same vapor that cools my body, the farmer’s soil, and stretches of rock surface, takes heat energy away in cloud formations, then disperses it in equal measure. These same clouds could trap more energy or bounce it back into outer space, all in patterns so complicated that it makes the heads of scientists spin and the most powerful computers crash.

Watching the surface of water has been a captivating experience for so many of us. It’s like watching a human face that can reveal as much as it can hide. The gently rippled water might awoke the stable, comforting feeling of nursing, while masking a buried current that seeks to unload its energy. Surviving mariners were the ones who had mastered the anger management of all three phases of water.

Water is not life, but the medium of life, and its face is as mysterious as life itself.

I pay attention to the face of water; its signals return me safely from my solitary travels.

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Sweet Water Sea

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