Hello, and good morning Sundra. How are you doing today? Hello?
Er? You know the magazine cover. I grew up with National Geographic,
so it's always going to be a magazine to me. The book cover says
National Geographic Kids. Now on the line with Ero, Hello and good morning
Sundra. How are you doing today? I'm doing well, Ero, how
are you? Absolutely fantastic. I'm always going to look at it as being
the National Geographics magazine because that's the generation I come from. But boy,
this book, and I know on the outside cover it says National Geographic Kids,
But I'm telling you this is an adult book as well. It totally
is an adult book as well. I think it's great for everyone to dive
into water with this book. Water is a huge part of my poetry,
the way that I write, the way that I walk in life, and
because I'm always inspired by that raindrop that's going to find its way to the
ocean, and you give me an opportunity to dive deeper into the spiritual shape
of water. Well, I'm glad for that. And again I wrote the
forward for this book that the author is Leasa Gary Right. All credit to
her too and the whole team at NATO for for pulling this book together.
It's it's a fabulous book and it really does directly right. It goes into,
you know, sort of all of the elements of water, the spiritual
aspects, the magical aspects, the very practical aspects, how much we need
water for. It's all there, and I think it's it's so multidimensional and
exactly these ways, and it allows everyone to connect to water in whatever way
it makes the most sense to them and become interested more interested in conserving it
and protecting it. Well, the entire gang at Natural Geographics they totally understand
and they're so willing to teach it that everything on this planet needs water.
And I hope this opens up a lot of people's eyes. Well, I
call s too. And it really is the most fundamental thing that we can
say about water, that it is the basis of life. And we say
it water is life. Water is life. But coming to grips with that
is it's so key because because of water scarcity and droughts and depletion of water
and then climate change and habitat loss, we're losing life. And I think
water and protecting it and conserving it and making sure that we share water with
the natural world, which we are part of, of course, is really
critical. And understanding that water's finite, there's only so much there, and
that using it wisely, sharing it with each other and with nature is essential
to all of us having a secure future and a happy future. So I
think, I think that connection is really critical. You hit it right on
the head. Well, you hit it on the head when you said share,
because I don't want to bring any politics in here, but over the
past couple of days, they're trying to reshape the flow of the water of
the Colorado River, but a lot of states are going to suffer, and
right away, my heart has been crying because it's like, no, we
can't take away the water in these areas that we're already thirsty. And so
I mean, we have to figure out how to share it better. We
do have to figure out how to share it better. And there's an ethical
question to that, there's a technological question to that, there's an equity question
to that, and I think applying all of those values is really critical.
The fact of the matter is we're using more water in the Colorado River basin.
To cite the example you brought up, we're using more water than is
there, which means we're depleting it. Yes, and we have not been
sharing with nature. If you go to the very end of the Colorado River,
the delta, the delta has not received water for decades. Right,
there's no water flowing through the delta anymore. And that used to be a
beautiful, beautiful wetland for birds and wildlife, and it's a desiccated place now.
But what we've learned from an experiment that's been going on for the last
old ten fifteen years now that if we give some water back, life returns.
I was down there to see part of this experiment, and it was
just amazing to see that when you allow water to flow back through that delta,
the life begins to return. And that's a hopeful message that even if
we have sort of lost wetlands here and there, we've depleted rivers here and
there, we've damned rivers all over the place, if we can let them
flow again, if we can bring water back to them, if we can
restore wetlands, life comes back. Nature is resilient if we give it a
chance. And I think that is a very important message, a very hopeful
message as we go forward. You're so right about that, because that's happening
here in the Carolinas. They just they just read this whole entire lay of
land and brought water to a river that's been dry for one hundred years.
And I cannot wait to watch how nature is going to change in this Greatfall
South Carolina area, because it's going to change the concept of thought as well
as the human concept of we're growing because we you know, we just accept
things when they happen. Oh, it's a nature. Oh it's nature.
Well, as humans, let's do something about it. That's right. We're
part of nature and we have a huge influence now on nature. I mean,
what we've heard is from biologists is that the sixth extinction is underway and
it's being driven by us, which means we have an obligation and a responsibility
and the ability to do something about that. And I think it's very important
and water is it just a critical piece of that. You know. One
of the most hopeful things I've seen in this country is that over the last
thirty years, we have moved toward taking down dams that we no longer need
for Dams that might have been built in the nineteenth century for textile mills and
so on, and they're no longer functioning as as dams in the way they
were built, but they're still blocking the rivers and often they're a safety issue,
you know, if they're not being maintained, they can break down,
and so we're taking them down intentionally. We've taken down about sixteen hundred dams,
mostly small ones, but some sizeable ones, which is letting rivers flow
free again and restoring habitat, which is giving fish and aquatic life the habitat
they need to come back. And the really inspiring part of that story is
that within a year or two, populations of fish come back to big numbers.
I mean, I think more in larger numbers than most of us would
have expected. Whether it's shad or salmon. They come back when given the
opportunity, and again that's the resilience of nature if we give it a chance.
The book we're talking about is Natural Geographics Kids, and the title is
Water's let's go to the route of the kids right now, because the kid
and me came out when I heard that water that came from dinosaurs or during
the dinosaur age, we're still drinking today. How is that possible. It's
pretty amazing. Well, it's because water is by nite, right. There
might be a little bit of water that's added through what we call cosmic snowballs,
you know, that bring a little bit of water in. But for
the most part, the water that's here on Earth now has been here since
the beginning of the creation of Earth, right, and so that water is
finite and its cycles across space and across time. And so the water that
I made, you know, used to make my coffee this morning. Yes,
it could have quenched the thirst of a dinosaur hundreds of millions of years
ago. It's wild to think about. It's also fun to think about because
you know, it connects everything. It connects me to the dinosaurs, and
it connects everything that's here now. So it's a very it's a fun fact
really that that that that water doesn't go away. It changes form. It
might be you know, water vapor in the atmosphere at one point and it
will come down as rain or snow. Then it will become part of the
ground water or part of a lake, and then it'll evaporate back to the
atmosphere and condense and fall as rain all over again on different time scales.
So these molecules are constantly supporting life in different places in different ways, and
we're a part of that now. And I think that connection is I think
a really kind of fun an important way to think about water. And we
should put focus on life in the water, because the beauty of a river,
especially the river in Colombia, with what it does every single year,
what a landscape of beauty. Absolutely, I mean, rivers are really remarkable
when you think about them, and they cross and of course one of the
challenges for how we manage them and share them is that they're constantly crossing boundaries
from state to state, from country to country. So again back to our
point of sharing, it's so important to share that water with each other and
with nature. And I just I'm always still amazed that you know, when
you go to someplace like the columb be a gorge or the Grand Canyon,
that water basically created these amazing features. You know that that water could carve
the Grand Canyon over time is still a put of a mind boggling thing.
Just the magic of water that we see in so many different ways. Oh,
I so invite so many people to read this book and you know,
it's I think one of the most fascinating things that happened. There's there's a
performer on NBC's The Voice this year that's from Saint Louis, and we got
hooked up on talking about the Missouri River. Nobody talks about the Missouri River,
but man, it was fascinating because it's the water. I love the
water, and we talked about this in the very beginning. There's something about
water that creates the stories to be told. That's right. I mean,
you think about the you know, the Mark train stories of the Mississippi,
and you know, the Missouri joins the Mississippi right there at Saint Louis and
then flows on down to New Orleans and the Mississippi, you know, as
part of that excuse me, the Missouri as part of that Mississippi basin together.
That's about of the continental United States that's straining into the Missouri and Mississippi
and then heading down to the Gulf of Mexico. So a big portion of
our country is in that watershed and managing that river. You know, it's
it's of course been dammed for flood control and hydropower and irrigation, as most
rivers have been but there's still an opportunity to you know, to bring back
more health and more life in those in those rivers. Wow. Please come
back to this show anytime in the future. The door is always going to
be open for you. Well, thank you, I'd love to. Will
you be brilliant today? Okay, will you do the same. Thank you
very much for taking the time you bet. Thank you