Water: falling, flowing, resting

Water. Agua. H2O. The stuff of life. The planet is 70% water. We humans are 70% water. Liquid mania. But in all its forms, there lie names for them. But as chaotic as water is, in motion, and at rest, there IS an order to their well-being. Just like there are different terms for rain, also made up of water, as to how soft, how hard and how frequent it falls. I like water. Have lived on the coast my entire life. Fortunately, the West Coast where there is no danger water-related, except the occasional tsunami warning when an earthquake occurs in Japan. But that’s a long way to travel, and to this day, has never occurred. The East and Gulf Coasts are not so lucky. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We begin with water in motion, since water falls first, then flows, ending in a resting destination. Rain. Although technically, it’s a circle in progress, since water evaporates from the larger bodies at rest, saturating the clouds until it comes down. But for the sake of a starting point, we’ll begin in the clouds, since that’s where it solidifies from a gas into liquid form before finally falling.

We begin with “mist”. Very soft, and tolerable, when outside. Barely wets the sidewalk, but will elicit a specific odor on pavement if it hasn’t done so for a long period. We all know that smell. Next is the “drizzle”. Some consider this stronger than the “shower”. Maybe so. The “shower” is a “drizzle”, or the stronger “rain”, but only scattered, and for a short duration. You know – like the difference between the short “shower”, and the longer “bath” we take. Of course, if you thizzle with the drizzle, you may find a mizzle of fizzle, you hizzle?

“Rain” is pretty much the generic for its continuous nature of a larger geographical area. Heavy rains are commonly referred to as “downpours”. Notice the level of strength here? Enter the storm. “Downpours” combined with heavy winds. It’s getting worse, people. Which brings us to the next level, where major damage to structures and roadways occur. Including injuries, and deaths in extreme situations.

Monsoons, typhoons and hurricanes. All are basically the same, but were given different names based on geographical locations. Monsoons originated in the Arabian Sea and primarily strike between Africa and India. Typhoons strike primarily from the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean, doing most of it’s damage in SouthEast Asia. And the most famous of them all, the hurricane, is a regular seasonal occurrence off the Atlantic Ocean, moving between Florida and the Caribbean Islands, and doing it’s most damage through the US Gulf Coast (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Eastern Texas).

It does get worse, but not as often, when referring to strength. And that would be the tsunami/tidal wave. This one is much more damaging, and the threat is real and verifiable, but I can’t remember one actually happening in the 50 years. There IS a difference between the two. Tsunami is a Japanese term for a wall of water entering a harbor, due to a sudden drop or increase in pressure underground, mostly by way of earthquake. It’s a half-misnomer because it isn’t relegated just to harbors. A tidal wave refers to a higher-than-normal tide. But the tsunami does not occur based on tidal changes. So the tidal wave as it is referred to in the tsunami sense, is a complete misnomer.

Earthquakes result when continental plates shift, on land or at sea. When it occurs at sea, the threat of a tsunami develops. They occur in Japan more often than not, as they tend to have more earthquakes along their continental shelves than we do here on the US West Coast. Nonetheless, every time THEY have an earthquake, we get the warning. I have no idea if they get a warning when we sustain a major one. Does anyone know how you can tell it’s raining cats and dogs? When you step in a poodle, of course.

The next step in the natural ecosystem process are the bodies in motion. The water falling from the heavens to the earth, create a myriad of flowing streams. “Streams” have its place in between other forms, when referencing strength of flow and volume displacement, but also doubles as a generic reference.

We start with the small and natural wonder, the “brook”. The “creek” comes next, but both elicit a wonderful backwoods, country-feeling peace and solitude. And wonder towns and cities with “creek” in their name are often preferred?! I find them so close, they could be interchangeable, but some creeks are wider than most brooks, so we’re dealing not so much with flow, but with volume displacement. You can walk across any brook, but if the depth falls at any point, up to your waist, you’d have to accept it as a creek. Maybe not so much as a stream, where it is wider and deeper. BTW, that’s where stream would fall, in between a creek and a river.

Although some rivers, those not so wide, or deep, as it were, are considered streams, but definitely more so than a creek. Other so-called streams, when several are flowing, converging into one river, are called gullies and tributaries. Think of them as blood capillaries, multiple in nature, converging into the larger vein or artery. See? All it takes is one visual analogy.

Like we all do as we grow older and slow down in life, water eventually finds a resting place where it can relax in peace and solitude, only to be occasionally interrupted and interfered with for a time. The perfect start to this transition is called the “delta”. It’s a point of convergence when the end of a river meets a larger body of water, which also varies in size, resulting in a variety of names. First up – the “lagoon”. That would be a small inlet off a larger body of water, usually a “sea” or “ocean”. Next up, bodies of water within land – the smaller “pond”, and the larger “lake”. Then again, you have the “cove”, which is larger than a “lagoon”, but essentially the same, falling in between the “pond” and the “lake”. All “coves” are pretty much larger than your average pond, but lakes vary greatly in size, from the small lake in your local park, which would be smaller than a traditional “cove”, to the larger lakes such as the US’s Erie, Michigan, etc, which could almost be considered small seas, if they were salt-based, and definitely larger than a “cove”.

After the cove, and subsequent lake, comes the smaller “bay”, as in SF Bay, which is a misnomer. Even though it is connected to an ocean which is salt-water-based, the SF Bay is fed by two rivers from up North, which are fresh-water-based, making the SF Bay not a bay, but an estuary. And the larger “gulf”, as in Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of Tonkin (bordering India, Burma and Indonesia) or the Persian Gulf, where two rivers converge (Tigris and Euphrates). Both are considered inlets, but on a grander scale than the lagoon or cove. Sorta like the land mass counterpart, “cul-de-sac”, “court” and “circle”. The cul-de-sac would be the smaller lagoon or cove, the court would be the mid-sized bay, and the circle would be the larger gulf.

The two larger bodies are the “sea”, and the “ocean”. Obviously, the difference here is not just the size, but how one connects to another. “Seas” are usually very large lakes, but connect to the larger “ocean”, and are salt-water-based, as their ocean connection is. Here’s another way to look at it: land surrounds seas while oceans surround land.

But what I want to know is, historically speaking, if the world contains 7 official Oceans, like the 7 official continents, why did they call it “sailing the Seven Seas” when referring to the old days of sea adventure? I found the answer. Originally, “sailing the seven seas” was geographically limited to Europe and the Middle East – the Aegean, Arabian, Black, Caspian, Mediterranean, Persian and Red Seas. As you can see, all were centrally located.

It wasn’t until later oceans were included, listing the seven seas as the seven largest bodies of water – the Arctic, Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans, the Mediterranean and Caribbean Seas, and the Gulf of Mexico. But there are discrepancies there. Isn’t the Caribbean Sea in between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, making it more of a channel between the two, like the channel between England and France? And how is the Gulf of Mexico, a gulf, larger than other seas elsewhere in the world? Then again, how is the Indian Ocean considered an ocean when it is actually a gulf off the Pacific Ocean, as the Gulf of Mexico is off the Atlantic Ocean? This article should be linked to my other essay, The Continental Divide, due to it’s geographical inconsistencies.

Hey, if there can be three sets of the Seven Wonders Of The World (ancient, medieval, and modern), why not alternate sets of the Seven Seas.

Of course, no one wants to change historical data on a monster magnitude, for fear of having to reprint millions of new school textbook copies for the next generation. But still…change is inevitable, except from a vending machine, I always say.