Our watery world

I went to coffee with some friends this morning and afterwards stopped at the gym to exercise for almost an hour. The tricky part of all that was running through the rain from my car to the buildings and back again because I did not wear a jacket, or raincoat.

It made me think about what an anomaly water is.

Bathing in a hot tub of it is so relaxing. Running through a cold Autumn shower of it is freezing.

Water is so soft and  pliable. It takes on the shape of whatever contains it and yet a raging river of water can carry away buildings and trees!

Gentle enough to wash your baby, water can wear away mountains and create Grand Canyons.

A drop is here and gone in a second, but it is the persistence of millions of years that wears away those mountains and canyons.

It makes up a large part of our bodies.

It can be flavored to become coffee or tea, fizzed to make soda, boiled to make soup, frozen to make ice.

It reconstitutes many dried things and becomes a conveyance for soap to wash away bacteria.

It is necessary for life, fun for entertainment, productive enough to run machines and make electricity, and dangerous enough to take a life.

It can turn into a gas, a liquid, or a solid and the things you can do with, or in, those is almost endless.

All this from two tiny molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen!