Water

I don't like sand, I think that is a pretty common thing, you either love it or hate it and I am the latter. The Potomac River where I live and work is a massive river, almost 5 miles across in front of my house and with a big slow river comes a lot of sand. Along with the sand, the river picks up a lot of debris and garbage along its travels past Washington DC and many other smaller human centers. Today I found something on the beaches of Caledon State Park that made me appreciate the massive Potomac a little more. A bottle of Loon Aquel. At first I thought “Well that's cool, I bet it is still good to use” then I thought “Among all of the garbage that washes up on these beaches, what are the chances that this would be found by someone who actually knows what it is?”. As I was walking back to the truck I began to think about the journey that little bottle had taken, probably dropped somewhere along Jeremy’s Run or Little Hawksbill or some secluded little brook in Maryland or Pennsylvania. All the water flowing by the park and my house has its beginnings in the little mountain streams that I love. The water gathers into bigger basins and runs through cities, by parks and power plants. It transforms with the land around it into the big wide, sandy river I live next to. The life in the river has changed from little mayfly and caddis nymphs to blue crabs and oysters but it is still the same water, so in a way, I guess I can't help but love the big, sandy, smelly water of the lower Potomac. Not so long ago, this water was passing through the gills of a little brook trout or over a moss covered rock in the Shenandoah valley or even floating a size 16 Elk Hair Caddis above hungry trout eyes. Also, if you lost half a bottle of Aquel somewhere in the Potomac watershed in the last year or so, let me know and I’ll get it back to you.