The Tap in the Woods

There's a tap in the woods where I get my water. This tap, a spigot on the end of a metal pipe that sticks out of the side of a grassy, craggy slope, is a few miles from my house. I drive there, hike into the woods, get my water. I'm not going to identify its location any more than that, because maybe it's secret, maybe it's not. It would depend on whom you talked to.

I learned about the tap shortly after I moved here. It must have been an indirect reference, because for a long time, although I knew the tap was there, I didn't use it, thinking that as a newcomer perhaps I wasn't entitled to this secret water from the cool of the woods - this clear, delectable (or so I heard) water rising up out of the heart of the Hiawatha National Forest (or thereabouts). Then my vet asked me about it. He wanted to know if I'd had any of that good water from the woods near where I live. I said no, and he, being a non-native, proceeded to provide specific information on its location, and I had little trouble finding it.

I have water, of course, in my house, that comes from a well. I use that water for most purposes, but don't drink it. It has iron and tannin and stuff in it and I don't like the taste. I don't like the smell. I don't like the tint of orange it leaves behind. Whenever I get my hair cut the person cutting my hair will, at some point, get around to mentioning that my hair has a not-so-great well-water smell and a bit of discoloration to boot. (Natural highlights, I say.) I could get a Malibu treatment to relieve my hair of all this, but I don't. My hair is one thing, my taste buds another, so I get my drinking water from the Culligan machine at the grocery store (39 cents a gallon refill, not a bad deal) or from the tap in the woods.

I do not visit the tap in the winter, assuming it must freeze, and the tap's only failed me once, the time when someone was there just before me, the only time I have gone to the tap and seen someone else there. On a late summer afternoon this other person was filling up big five-gallon jugs, and when my turn rolled around I only got one or two gallons before the water petered out, said enough, I'm dry.

When I first started visiting the tap, it was one of those things I was very conscious of for its difference. I mean, most of my life I have simply turned on the faucet in the kitchen or bath and had water for any and all purposes. Now here I was in this pretty spot in the woods filling up jugs with water - coveted water - straight from the ground. But when I visited the tap in the woods for the first time this spring I realized that it no longer felt like a novelty. I had pulled over to the side of the road, hiked into the woods with my empty one-gallon jugs, sat on my haunches, turned on the spigot, and was placing the jugs one by one under the gushing water in the cool dappled shade of bright new leaves that spread out all over above me and behind me and in front of me and around me and noticing, after a while, a whole colony of trout lilies just about to bloom and there was not a sound but the leaves and a breeze and it struck me that none of it seemed unusual. Getting water, cool, clear water, from a secret tap in the woods was no longer a novelty but rather - and now I had to smile - a chore at the top of that day's list.

I thought about it and realized a lot of things have become like that over the almost six years I have lived here. The fact that the vet is a musher and has raced his dogs in the Iditarod; the fact that I fall asleep to absolutely no sound except in the spring the musical peepers and at any time, maybe, the on-again-off-again conversation between the north wind and Lake Superior. The fact that my old dog Buster trots on down to the river's edge all by himself, disappears, and does as he pleases for as long he pleases and returns with muddy, wet paws and a huge grin. The fact that I only get five TV stations (three networks) and then only when the weather is calm. The fact that the closest grocery store - the closest store of any sort - is twelve miles down the road. The fact of saunas. The fact that at night during a new moon it is dark, absolutely dark, until you see the stars, and at night during a full moon darkness seems not to fall at all. The fact that during this time of year the sunset lingers long into the night, and the sunrise can't seem to wait for a decent hour to greet you. The fact that coyotes yip and wolves howl. The fact of skunks and racoons and bear and hummingbirds and mosquitoes and deer flies and dragon flies and water lilies and vees of geese going north then south and slow springs (usually) and splashy, split-second autumns and long winters and short summers. The fact of goslings. The fact of heat that comes from wood and wood that comes from a dead tree in the forest. The fact of water from a well, the fact of water from a store, and the fact of water from a tap in the woods.