“Did you read that people in Texas are boiling snow for drinking water?”
“Did they get that much snow?”
“No, but what they did get shut the entire state down.”
“Oh yeah, I know that, but I was just thinking unless they got inches of snow, it won’t last them very long.”
My husband and I are in shock over the news we’ve just read. The thought of having to melt snow for drinking water makes my heart race. I grew up in a place where a quarter of an inch of snow felt like a lot. Now I live in a place where we think 4 inches isn’t enough. I stare out my window and see the 7 inches piled up just from last night, wondering how long it would last if that’s all the water we had to drink.
As I think about the reality my Texas friends face, my thoughts turn to the ways we use water just about every single day.
What would I use to boil pasta?
How would I make coffee or tea?
How would we wash the dishes? Our laundry would be piled up for days!
Even making taco meat requires a little bit of water.
What would we drink? Our bodies need water. The experts say to drink at least 8 glasses of water a day. Just how much snow is that for a family of four?
“I think it takes anywhere from 1-4 feet of snow to equal an inch of rain, depending on how powdery the snow,” I mutter out loud, as I start to think through the implications of this.
“I think that means a 5-gallon bucket would be about a half-gallon of water,” he replies.
If our math is correct, that means a family of four would need at least 20 gallons of snow to make enough water to keep you hydrated. 20 gallons of snow! Each. Day!
And then you’d need some way to safely filter it. My thoughts turn to our beloved Berkey water filter. At least I know if we lost water in our house, we could shovel all the snow into a bathtub and transfer it to the Berkey to be filtered and safe to drink.
Water is one of those things we sometimes take for granted. It’s so easy to stay in this privileged life we’re in, that we often forget millions of people around the world don’t have clean water to drink. It takes a natural disaster in our own country for us to become aware of that great need.
It’s so hard to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. But today we tried. Today, as we sat around our kitchen table, we talked with our daughters about what it might be like to have to use snow for water.
We shared the things we love most about water. A cold glass of water after we’ve come in from a long hike in the woods. Or after we’ve eaten a sugary ice cream cone.
Watching the bubbles when we boil a pot of pasta on the stove. The way water turns to broth when we combine it with a simple bag of beans.
Today we gave thanks for our water supply. We talked about those families in Texas who find themselves wondering if they’ll have enough water to last until the pipes are restored.
We prayed for people around the world who don’t have access to clean water.
And we prayed that we never take water for granted again.
This post is written in response to prompts from 40 Days of Writing the Everyday with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs.
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Photo by Jos Speetjens on Unsplash.