Water- is taken for granted.

 I saw on the news this morning that there is a whole town without water. A 50' water main broke, and the only way to fix it was to shut off the main supply to thousands of people. They went around interviewing the people that will be affected. They will be without water for a few days up to a week.

People that work in restaurants will have no work, and go a week without pay... businesses are losing a ton of money. People were filling up their bathtubs and pots.... bottles of water are sold out.

Now how does this all work? How will people use toilets? How will babies get water for their formula. If they had livestock, what will the animals drink? A Civil Engineer came on to say that people should think about the pipes underground, they wont last forever and will all need to be replaced, and soon we should all be ready for this to happen at one point or another. It is considered to be as bad as a natural disaster.

I think it's really pathetic that we have set ourselves up to rely so heavily on water supply presented to us in this way. I thought about what we would do if this happened to us here on the homestead. I think we would be fine, seeing as we live with a large creek the size of a lake in our backyard. I would just need to figure out how to filter it for drinking and transporting it without the use of electricity.

My brother owns a cabin up in the Adirondacks that has no running water or electricity. It takes some time to get used to not turning the taps for the sink, or flicking the light switch. It takes about two days to acclimate to the loss of luxuries. We have a large plastic 10 gallon tank that we fill up with water, and then we get a few gallons of drinking water bottles that we put over the sink. When it rains we put pots of water outside to collect water and use it to wash dishes. There is also a natural stream that forms at the bottom of the hill after it rains that I personally go and bath in, with all natural soap. It soon becomes second nature. We use too much water, and once it's taken from you it's amazing how you can make one gallon last a whole day for bathing, cooking, drinking, and washing.

Anyway, when it comes to this stuff, it almost brings me some sort of sick solace that I will be just fine when this happens. I have done it with ease.... I can live without water supply and electricity. I can even build a fire with wet wood, I can climb a mountain with a good 50 pounds on my back, I can build a waterproof and windproof hut out of sticks and rocks, I can even rock climb, even though I hate it with a passion. These skills were all learned in the Adirondacks over the summers. I think it's important to live like this for a week so it isn't a shock to the system, when say all of a sudden a water main breaks.

I really hope my boys grow up to be rugged mountain men that can tough it out and fight a bull if they need to. I love camping, I'm sure it's not fun when it becomes permanent, but I'm ready for the challenge.