The Nagas and the Elements (Part 1)

Today was a naga day—a day in which those snakelike “unseen beings associated with water and fluid energy” are said to be especially active and receptive to offerings—so I rose with the sun to make the short drive to my local spring to make an offering to the naga who may live there. The springs are busy all day long in the summer, especially on weekends once the local schools are no longer in session, and I’ve come to value whatever privacy I can get on those rare days—usually only a couple of times a month—when the calendar says the naga might accept my offering. So it’s best for me to go very early in the day, even though I’m not normally an early riser.

It was the Buddhist teacher Khenpo Ugyen Tenzin who first hinted there might be a naga at my neighborhood spring. Khenpo was staying at our house on his first visit to our area, and at dinner one night at a Thai restaurant, one of the folks visiting for Khenpo’s teaching mentioned to me that Khenpo “worked with the nagas.” I was immediately fascinated; the ideas of unseen worlds, magical and mysterious beings, psychic phenomena, and occult goings-on have always strongly magnetized me. So I asked Khenpo about the nagas, but I either asked at a bad time or we were hampered by his beginner’s skills in English and my total lack of skill in Tibetan.

But driving Khenpo into town for Sunday’s teaching on that weekend several years ago, I made a spontaneous decision to show him our local spring. Poor Khenpo! I imagine he must have felt as if he were being kidnapped, but luckily the spring isn’t that far off the main road and I calculated that we had just enough time to visit it without being late to the teaching.

We got out of the car and walked the short length of sidewalk along the river up to the spring, which wasn’t visible until we got right next to it. It was early on a spring morning, and we were lucky. There were a couple of people taking pictures, walking around the horseshoe-shaped limestone shelf that embraced the spring, but there was no one in the water so the spring boil was clearly visible as it bubbled up from the turquoise depths.

Khenpo and I stood in silence and watched the sparkling water until I realized our time was up. “We’d better go,” I said, and we turned back toward the car.

“This is a really unusual place,” Khenpo said after we had turned away from the spring. “Thank you for bringing me to see it.”

“Do you think there might be a naga here?” I asked him.

A tiny proto-smile formed at the corners of his mouth. “Yes, I think maybe so,” was all he said.

Some miles down the road, after we’d left the spring far behind, Khenpo looked at me and again said, “That was a very unusual place. Thank you for taking me to see it.”

I had an interview with Khenpo later that day, in the afternoon. “Khenpo,” I began, “this morning I took you to see the spring near where I live. Our springs are threatened now by so many things—they’re being polluted, and people want to pump water out of our rivers and put it in bottles and take it away to be sold. Would you please pray that our springs and rivers will be protected?”

Khenpo thought for a minute. “Don’t you think,” he asked, “that other people may have need of that water?”

Then it was my turn to think for a minute, and of course I remembered how we all needed bottled water, even here where water was plentiful, when the tropical storms came through and knocked out our power so the pumps on our wells wouldn’t work.

“Yes,” I answered, “I understand that. But I also know that if all our water gets taken away, there will be nothing left to support the people and animals and fish who depend on the water we have now.”

“I will pray, then,” Khenpo said, “for an auspicious balance.” I understood his answer to mean that yes, there would come a time when we would have to surrender some of our water for a greater good—the benefit of other sentient beings. With global warming now melting the glaciers and ice caps in Khenpo’s Himalayan homeland, that time may not be far off. Himalayan ice is the source of many of Asia’s great rivers, and when the ice is gone, there will be millions of people left in a region with practically no fresh water.

Khenpo’s visit inspired me to do some reading about nagas, which are really fascinating creatures. Often depicted in Asian art as part snake, part human, they are sometimes the guardians of the treasure texts hidden by the 8th-century Tibetan sages Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava) and his consort and principal disciple, Yeshe Tsogyal, for discovery in later eras when those texts will be especially beneficial. And nagas are strongly associated with bodies of water, especially springs, as well as great and magical trees.

It turns out that Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists all share the idea of nagas. As my friend Khandro relates on her web site, “In the language of Kashmir, the word for ‘a spring’ is naga…A large number of temples were built near springs and were dedicated to the worship of nagas…Most probably, treating springs and rivers with great reverence wittingly or unwittingly resulted in the ecological balance necessary for a healthy and natural interaction between the environment and man."

I love this idea of temples being built near springs, and treating springs and rivers with great reverence. I’d love it if every spring in Florida had its own temple, even a small one, because the temple would reinforce the sacredness of those spots where pure, cleansing water rises, unbidden, from the unseen depths. Our springs are magical, numinous places, and little temples might make people stop and think before they vandalize the areas around the springs, dump things like tires and railroad ties into the water, or forget to pack out their trash when they leave after a day of swimming.

I wonder how much our whole world would change if we treated all of our great natural features with reverence—and if we wouldn’t be better off for doing so.

(to be continued)

The picture above was taken at Ichetucknee Springs. Can you see the face of the naga? J

Adventures in Academia: High Weirdness With Computers and a Letter

The spring sunlight brightened the world outside my office window with a promise of even warmer days to come. Here, from the third-floor aerie of the college’s graphic design teaching program, I could see the bright neon glow of new green leaves and the ebb and flow of human tides as classes began and ended and began again.

Like the seasons, the activities of the college followed a regular pattern, and the arrival of springtime meant that we were nearing the end of our annual budget cycle. That cycle had begun last July, when we got word of how much money our department would have for the next 12 months. When that money actually reached us in August, we started buying things we needed for fall and spring semesters—office supplies, new planning books for the faculty, printer paper, markers and chalk and erasers for our classrooms, which were prominently featured in our marketing materials: “You will learn the newest techniques of graphic design working with state-of-the-art computers and the latest software.”

What we couldn’t afford, though, were those state-of-the-art computers and latest software. Money for those items had been held hostage for several years by our legislators, who refused to believe that any form of stable funding for education—especially for community colleges—could possibly benefit our state’s citizens.

But that spring, we had actually received some encouragement. After several years of ongoing discussions, the college’s administrators had agreed to let us use the lab fees they charged for classroom materials to purchase brand-new computers and software for our classrooms! And though we all thought this sounded like a no-brainer, the decision had taken three years; such was the pace of decision making in academia.

With frustration now replaced by boundless delight, we decided to share this good news with our students and Kitty, my boss, asked me to draft a letter to them. The letter would be especially important for students coming back in fall term, since the college was planning to raise lab fees considerably. We didn’t want a student revolution on our hands as Kitty surrendered steerage of our department to its new coordinator, Cabana Boy.

So I sat at my computer, drafting the letter and looking out over campus as the landscape began to flower and youthful hormones began to surge. I had been reading a lot in my spare time about earth religions, the pagan calendar, and the various rituals for reawakening that were appropriate for springtime. Drafting a happy letter to students fit right in! And while this job didn’t always use my highest skills and I sometimes copped a ho-hum attitude as the college moved through its annual cycle, I realized that I was basically content here. My co-workers were creative, lively, and liked to laugh, and there was a steady paycheck twice a month.

Life was good.

I finished the letter. Kitty liked my draft, tweaked the letter in a couple of places, and signed it. I made copies, and we gave the letter out to students as we approached finals week.

Spring warmed into early summer; June gave way to July and the new fiscal year. Cabana Boy took over from Kitty as coordinator, and our good humor carried us through the transition. Some of our students graduated and took jobs; others moved on to four-year colleges. We registered our returning students for fall term with no audible complaints about the increase in lab fees.

We started planning our computer and software purchases, and submitted the required paperwork to Dr. Doubledud, our division director, who was widely regarded as being one of those public employees who was retired on active duty. We’d done our jobs, though, and then some—bowing and scraping as our department hosted a seeming throng of new college trustees, dragged through as part of a tour of the college’s showcase programs—so we settled happily into our summer routine.

Life continued to be good, until our purchasing paperwork fell into a black hole that seemed deeper and blacker the longer the summer went on. When Dr. Doubledud returned from the World’s Longest Vacation, Cabana Boy was lucky enough one day to reach him by phone to get a progress report.

Hmmmm. It seemed that we’d had the mother of all misunderstandings. Cabana Boy was assured, via Dr. Doubledud, that the college never had any intention of using lab fees in those programs where those fees were actually collected. Would we get new computers this year? Nope. New software? Nope.

Now, at this point, here is what a good bureaucrat would have done: Nothing. And here is what a good bureaucrat would have said: Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. And so here is where the story would have ended.

Except that I had never been that good bureaucrat, and anger rose up within me like a lion because that letter Kitty signed, that went out to students—that letter that I drafted—that letter, from back in spring term when the earth was turning and the world was greening and we were basking in a garden of delight—that letter was now a lie.

A lie told, unwittingly, by Kitty, who was right up there at the top of my list of favorite and best supervisors ever. Favorite, because we had similar interests and enjoyed giggles and good conversation about things that were totally unrelated to our jobs. Best, because she was smart, organized, honest, trustworthy, and knew how to give direction without micromanaging. Any one of these traits would have been enough to set her head and shoulders above most supervisors, but she had them all—in droves. And it’s because of her honesty that I had that lion anger about her letter’s being made out to be a lie—because she didn’t lie.

So what I thought of as my Artemis energy—that energy that protects animals, children, those weaker and more helpless than those predators who prey on them—started to kick in. And when Artemis kicks in, look out.

Cabana Boy and Kitty were both thrown for a loop by Dr. Doubledud’s assertions, because they had both been in the meetings in which the lab fee and computer purchase issues were discussed, and they both had heard the same assurances: Lab fees would stay in the departments where they were collected and would be used to purchase materials that were needed for those departments.

It turned out that Cabana Boy wasn’t the best bureaucrat in the world, either. He made some phone calls on the sly to other administrators who were in those same meetings—something he should have cleared with Dr. Doubledud first, because administrators always liked for their underlings to “go through channels”—and was told no, those things he had thought that he actually heard were never actually said.

We realized that perhaps something involving the college’s finances had changed dramatically, something that we didn’t know about—something that would mean the college desperately needed to use those lab fees somewhere else, at least for this year—but none of us could figure out why, if that were the case, the administrators would feel they should lie about it.

Kitty finally accepted the situation but Cabana Boy and I remained flummoxed, certain that there was something more we could or should do, but not sure what that something was.

Then I remembered: The college’s president, Dr. Tumbleweed—for whom I had once written speeches—had what he called an open-door policy, and frequently made himself accessible to students, staff, and faculty by plopping down in various well-announced places on campus for an hour or so, to take questions and comments from anyone and everyone who showed up.

Surely, I thought, if he knew about this situation, he could do something to fix it. He could work some magic, and Kitty would no longer be made out to be a liar to our students. All we wanted, really, were some new computers and new software. All our marketing materials said we had them! We were a showcase department for the college! Why should we have to beg?

I was not above begging, though—or communicating with the college’s president—if either would get us the equipment our students needed. I decided to write a letter because I was the only support staff person, and if I left my desk to meet with Dr. Tumbleweed we would have to close the office.

“Dear Dr. Tumbleweed,” I typed, “I could very easily title this letter, ‘Don’t shoot the messenger.’” It was one of his favorite phrases, so I figured it would buy me some absolution for what I was about to say: “Our administrators have just made my former supervisor out to be a liar.” And I explained the whole situation, in as much detail as would fit on one page—how neither Kitty nor Cabana Boy were in the habit of hearing things that weren’t said, how we could all understand if something in the college’s budget had changed and in that case, we would all like to hear what that was and why the funds we had been assured we would get were not actually coming to us. Most of all, I stressed that our students were expecting to be trained on the latest hardware and software, and that wasn’t happening.

I marked the letter “CONFIDENTIAL,” sent it through campus mail, and waited.

Weeks went by, and we began fall term with old computers and old software. One day, we had a call from Ruby, Dr. Doubledud’s administrative assistant. Dr. Doubledud wanted a meeting with Kitty and Cabana Boy.

I got a really knotty feeling in the pit of my stomach, the same feeling I got when I had a strong psychic flash that turned out to be right; it was not a pleasant sensation.

“You don’t think this could be about my letter to Dr. Tumbleweed, do you?” I asked both Cabana Boy and Kitty. They doubted it, but I felt no relief.

I have found out, over time, that my stomach does not lie in cases like this. Kitty and Cabana Boy returned from the meeting with long faces. I sensed instantly that something had gone terribly wrong.

“What is it?” I asked. My voice was almost shaking.

“It was about you,” they told me, “and the letter you wrote. Dr. Tumbleweed wanted us to fire you. We said no.”

Kitty and Cabana Boy explained to Dr. Doubledud that they had read the letter before I sent it, that they agreed with what I had said, that there was absolutely no difference between my writing a letter when I could have walked up to Dr. Tumbleweed at an open office hour and said exactly the same things I said in the letter, and furthermore, the letter had been marked CONFIDENTIAL so how was it that Dr. Doubledud now knew about it?

When they refused to fire me, Dr. Doubledud hit them with another gem: They had to give assurances that they would tell me that I was never, ever to communicate with Dr. Tumbleweed again.

“Why would she?” Cabana Boy asked. “She marked her letter confidential, and he’s now violated that confidentiality. You can be sure she’ll never communicate with him again.”

No, I thought, I certainly never would. I was rendered speechless by their support, and bewildered by this crazy turn of events. Dr. Tumbleweed was, after all, not a stranger; I had worked directly for him for a time, and we had, I thought, gotten along fairly well.

That night when I got home, I asked my husband, “What kind of organization is it that tries to silence its employees?”

He thought for a while, but not long.

“Fascist,” he replied.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, during World War II, described the domination of the government by corporate power as “the essence of fascism.” Benito Mussolini said that fascism should be called corporatism because it is essentially the merger of state and corporate power. Essential to fascism’s success, it seems to me, is a population that is afraid to speak out, to challenge those people who use power in ways that harm other people and harm the planet. A silent citizenry is a doomed citizenry.

“Adventures in Academia” is a chapter from “Failed Bureaucrat,” a work in progress.

The Springs and The People: A 21st-Century Fairy Tale

Once upon a time there was a place called Florida that had more freshwater springs, and more big freshwater springs, than anyplace else in the world.

Even before the land was called “Florida,” the springs were gathering places for the native people who visited them to fish, to gather water, and to tell stories as they sat and whittled their arrow points.

When the European explorers first came to the land they named Florida, they were enchanted by the springs. Some of them even thought the springs were fountains of youth, magical places where people could be cured of their ills and come away rejuvenated.

Later on, more explorers and naturalists were drawn to the springs. One of them, William Bartram, gave us some of our first written descriptions of these water wonders. And because people were learning how to communicate over great distances, Bartram’s writings—and Florida's springs—inspired poets and artists and curious people in faraway lands.

As time went on and word about these enchanted places spread, people came from all over the world to visit these water wonders.

People came to camp and canoe and hike the trails along the runs where the clear blue spring waters ran out to join the brown waters of the rivers that flowed long distances to the sea.

People came to dive hundreds of feet below the surface of the springs to explore the vast, mysterious network of underground caves where no one had ever gone before.

People came to swim in the bright sweet clear spring water as it gushed up between limestone rocks from deep inside the earth.

People were enchanted by the springs.

For many years, no one worried about the springs. Everyone assumed the springs would flow forever, crystal blue and shining with that sweet smell of really clear water, under the Florida sun.

But then, as always, things began to change.

People who lived near the springs and rivers began to fertilize their crops and their lawns, not realizing that fertilizer is something that hurts the springs.

People brought in many dairy cows, not realizing that the waste from cattle is something that hurts the springs.

More and more people began to water their lawns, not realizing that using so much water is something that hurts the springs.

Some people even realized that they could pipe free water out of the springs and sell it for profit, not realizing or not caring that pumping so much water is something that hurts the springs.

Eventually, some of the people who visited the springs started to notice changes.

Underwater plants that used to flourish in the clear spring runs began to disappear.

The water in the springs, usually a clear bright blue, slowly began to turn green. Something called algae began to show up where it had never been seen before.

Springs began to produce less water. Some springs even disappeared completely.

The people who were worried began to make little noises. The people in Florida who had the power to make laws to protect the springs mostly ignored these noises.

The worried people began to make louder noises. The Florida lawmakers turned their backs.

The worried people decided to take their case to court. They were willing to use every tool they had to save the springs. They went to court, and got a big federal agency to agree to enforce some laws that the worried people hoped would protect the springs.

But the lawmakers couldn’t be swayed. Protection costs too much, they said. We can’t afford it, they said.

So the lawmakers—who were supposed to represent all the people, but who really represented only a few people who had a lot of money—took actions of their own to make sure that the springs would never be protected.

Over time, swimmers began to get rashes from the water, and some of them even got sick.

Over time, the springs got cloudier and darker.

Over time, fish began to die.

Over time, the water got so murky that the cave divers stopped coming.

Over time, the swimmers and canoers and hikers and picknickers stopped coming to the springs.

Over time, the many people who ran businesses that catered to the springs visitors closed up shop. Little towns along the rivers began to look like ghost towns.

And on bright hot summer days at the springs—when once you would hear the laughter of families and friends as they splashed and swam and grilled and ate and were happy—all you could hear instead was a vast silence.

And when the springs died, a little bit of all of us—and a little bit of enchantment—died too.

Moral: Our springs need champions, but it doesn’t look like we are going to get any from the political arena. So it’s up to each and every one of us to do whatever we can to save the springs. What can YOU do?

Driving to the Writing Workshop

It's March 4, New Moon in Virgo—which happens to be my birth sign—and I'm driving from Florida to Reidsville, Georgia, for an environmental writing workshop with one my heroines, Janisse Ray.

I drove the Florida-Georgia route many times with my parents when I was small, but I don't ever remember driving this stretch from Lake City, Florida, to Homerville, Georgia. It's just about the longest stretch of nothin' I've ever seen—miles and miles with no houses, no settlements, no gas stations, nothing but planted pines and swampy areas along the edges of the road, punctuated by the occasional sight of a dead deer that was hit by a passing vehicle.

I am travelling the western edge of the Okefenokee Swamp, where the Suwannee River rises out of Georgia mud for its long, meandering flow west to the Gulf of Mexico.

I give a little prayer of thanks that I had enough foresight to fill the car's gas tank before I left Lake City. There's certainly no gasoline to be had on this stretch of road.

Actually, I enjoy this long stretch of nothin'. There are too many planted pines for me to say that I'm in a wilderness area, but there are practically no other cars or humans to be seen, and the solitude is welcome. Music even seems jarring, so I turn off the radio.

It's late winter here in the South, and most of the landscape—except for the ubiquitous planted pines—is still a dull grayish-brown, splashed here and there with the brilliant pink of a blooming redbud or the snowy white blooms of pear or wild plum—tree candy for the eyes, especially after our cold winter.

A grey fox lopes from west to east some distance in front of my car. I slow down.

Crossing into Georgia, I spot a spectacular two-story wooden building right on the banks of the Suwannee River. It turns out to be the Suwannee River Visitors Center, and the building is so impressive that I pull in to investigate.

I find a very welcoming volunteer staffer, some wonderful exhibits, a great selection of books about the area, an array of t-shirts in gorgeous soft autumn colors (my favorite!), and a bona fide composting toilet! Best of all, this is a "green" building—LEED certified—an example of what state agencies everywhere could be doing if only they had the funding.

Coming out of Homerville, the landscape becomes more civilized, though still mostly rural. I smile when I see the signs so common to rural areas everywhere: "brown eggs for sale," "chicks are in," and, amidst pecan groves, "Nut 'n' Honey." Lots of places are selling honey; hopefully this area has not been hard hit by bee colony collapse.

And churches. Everywhere, little country churches.

I can't ever drive for a long way without remembering all the road trips I took with my parents when I was a child. We moved a lot, and we took summer vacations every year, often driving from Georgia or Florida to Texas to visit my paternal grandparents and my father's sister.

I drive by a field and am suddenly haunted by these old memories of road trips with my folks, sparked by the sight of small round stubby bushes flecked with white. I know this crop; I used to see it on the way to Texas when I was little, but it's been so long since I've seen it that it takes me a few seconds to recognize it: cotton, emblematic cash crop of the South, source of "the fabric of our lives."

So much Southern history draped around cotton. So many memories of my parents and grandparents.

So many tears.

And yet, so much still to love.

The pear trees here in Georgia seem bigger and more showy than the pears in Florida. Big and spectacular, these Georgia trees boast oodles of snowy blossoms that toss and glow in the brisk wind. If you love trees, you have to love these pears.

Getting close to Reidsville, with the road winding through farm after farm and pecan grove after pecan grove, I spy a red brick country church bordered on one side by a long row of some of the tallest and most beautiful pear trees I've seen so far.

Like many country churches, this one has a sign out front. The country church, the gorgeous pears, and the sign combine to create a silent sermon in only three words.

LOVE NEVER FAILS.

And just for the briefest moment, my busy mind stops.

The photo shows the Suwannee River Visitors Center in Fargo, Georgia. Great place to visit! Click on the photo for a larger view.

Kubla Khan OR, A VISION IN A DREAM. A FRAGMENT. by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced:

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:

And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure

Floated midway on the waves;

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 'twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Some people think Coleridge was inspired by William Bartram's descriptions of Florida's mighty fountains, our own beautiful freshwater springs. The photo, above, is the head spring at Ichtetucknee. Click on the image for a larger view!

What Would You Do?

What would you do if someone told you that you lived in the middle of the largest concentration of freshwater springs on planet Earth? Over 900* springs in all?

And that some of those springs had already ceased to flow?

And that others—springs widely recognized as the area's gems and state's treasures—had lost 20% or 30% of their flows?

Because too many people watered too many lawns? Too many businesses failed to use best management practices? Too many governments, businesses, agribusinesses, and individuals failed to conserve water and return treated water to the aquifer?

What would you do if you knew that one day, Silver Springs might not exist? Ichetucknee Springs? Wekiva? Wakulla?

What would you do if you knew that we only had 3 years to make a difference, or we might lose our springs forever?

What would you do?

*Thanks to Dr. Bob Knight of the Florida Springs Institute for this updated figure for Florida's freshwater springs.

The image above is of the head springs at Ichetucknee Springs State Park. Click on the image for a better view.

Saving Our Springs by Asking the Right Questions

I’ve been thinking about Florida’s water issues again and, in particular, the fate of those springs that are our own unique, sparkling jewels—Silver, Ichetucknee, Manatee, Wekiva, and so many more, over 900 in all, the largest concentration of freshwater springs in the world.

Put that much crystal-clear water together in one place, and the springs long ago would have been named a World Heritage Site or at the very least, a National Park. But because they are scattered, held by a mix of public and private owners, and because the State of Florida is reluctant to enforce or even enact regulations that would help preserve these gems, it seems that task falls to all the rest of us.

As I’ve watched and welcomed the expanding dialogue about Florida’s water issues, I’ve realized something else.

Just as we can’t expect the government to step in and prevent the springs from being loved to death, polluted, or pumped dry, so we cannot expect science to provide all the answers to our water problems.

I’m not saying we don’t need science; we do. It’s just that I think the kind of effort that is going to be required to save our springs can only be successful if we advance the dialogue beyond the seemingly endless scientific arguments that surface at every public meeting, and start asking some of the bigger moral and ethical questions that this issue demands.

Science, after all, was not developed to solve every human dilemma—only to explain the workings of the natural world. To solve the really big problems, I am convinced that we need to bring into play ethics, morality, empathy, and compassion.

If we first recognize that each of us needs clean water to survive, and that each of us is capable of contributing to the fouling and diminishment of that water, then I think we can begin to ask some of the bigger questions that might be helpful.

What are our responsibilities as individuals, neighbors, communities, and businesses with regard to keeping our water free of pollutants? Conserving water when we can? Keeping our septic tanks in good working order? Changing the way we fertilize our plants? Making the switch from manicured lawns that need lots of water to alternatives such as native plant gardens that need less? Buying sturdy water bottles and getting our drinking water from the tap? Speaking out about our role in saving our water and our springs to family, friends, and acquaintances in our neighborhoods, churches, workplaces, and schools?

And can we even come to collective agreement about the answers to these questions in an environment that seems to polarize us at every turn?

Florida’s new governor seems intent on relegating a lot of the state’s “anti-business” regulations to the dustbin; I worry about how this will affect our water quality, and how it will affect all those businesses that depend on water-based recreational tourism, all those other businesses that use Florida’s natural environment as a recruiting tool for their employees, and all the rest of us who can’t think of anything better than a cool dip in the springs on a hot summer day.

For quite a while now, I’ve felt alone in wondering if we should be asking these ethical questions, so I was delighted recently to discover that I’m not alone. For people who are interested, I recommend the new book Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril edited by Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson.

I think the sooner we start asking the big questions, the closer we may come to saving our springs. I offer these thoughts in the hope that they may start a ripple effect.

Note: The Gainesville Sun was kind enough to publish this as an opinion piece on January 24, 2010.