Water

As a direct descendant of Lot Smith, I've particularly enjoyed reading the Jeannette Walls book, Half Broke Horses, A True-Life Novel. Lot Smith's son James Smith is the author's grandfather.
On page 148 she writes so beautifully the words she remembers coming from him. I quote:
"Sometimes after supper when Jim got home from a storm, the kids would describe their escapades in the water and mud, and Jim would recount his vast store of water lore and water history. Once the world was nothing but water, he explained, and you wouldn't think it to look at us, but human beings were mostly water. The miraculous thing about water, he said, was that it never came to an end. All the water on the earth had been here since the beginning of time, it had just moved around from rivers and lakes and oceans to clouds and rain and puddles and then sunk through the soil to underground streams, to springs and wells where it got drunk by people and animals and went back to rivers and lakes and oceans.
"The water you kids were playing in, he said, had probably been to Africa and the North Pole. Genghis Khan or St. Peter or even Jesus himself might have drunk it. Cleopatra might have bathed in it. Crazy Horse might have watered his pony with it. Sometimes water was liquid. Sometimes it was rock hard--ice. Sometimes it was soft--snow. Sometimes it was visible, but weightless--clouds. And sometimes it was completely invisible--vapor--floating up into the sky like the souls of dead people. There was nothing in the world like water, Jim said. It made the desert bloom, but also turned rich bottomland into swamp. Without it, we'd die, but it could also kill us, and that was why we loved it, even craved it, but also feared it. Never take water for granted, Jim said.Always cherish it. Always beware of it."

That's my kind of nature writing! I feel the shared genes, passing down to me also the wonder of existence, of the material world, but in my case, of the inner world as well. I marvel at the sheer power of mere words, when one can find them, that shock us into seeing things that are ordinary but extraordinary. I love paradox too. Unlike water ("Without it we'd die, but it could also kill us...")paradox is safe. I can almost hear Jim Smith whispering in my ear--"Damn safe"--then laughing at his little joke.
Hats off to Jeannette Walls for her two great books which have helped explain me to myself in such fine writing.