I stand here on a short bridge, in a small town, surrounded by hills
Staring at a water stream racing its way through
I look at the way the village is built around the stream, contains it, crosses over it, encapsulates it
I am mesmerized by the never ending torrent of water, crashing over rocks, smashing into walls, spinning in vortices

My mind wanders
What does the river look like when it’s at its strongest?
Where does this never ending flow of water come from?
When did the rain fall that is now passing beneath my feet?

My mind zooms in
I imagine the individual, uncountable molecules that make up this water
All of them tumbling over each other
Many of them perhaps following a path straight through
Some of them maybe getting caught in a quiet puddle on the side
If only for a while

What if you could tag 50.000 of them, as they fell to the ground?
Track them across the continent, from the moment they stopped falling?
How many would evaporate back into the clouds right where they fell?
How many would trickle into the ground? Do they get stuck there?
How many would find their way into a river, like the one I am looking at now?
Do they all end up in the ocean at some point?
How varied would their journeys be?
Is there even a significant difference?

Each of them is absolutely tiny
Yet all of them together, make up the river beneath my feet
The water in the bottle that’s in my backpack
The water in my body

It’s a common enough sight
Water

And yet, it can be mysterious, too