Walking for Water

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A writer and translator, whose works include “Lesbos” (a book about love and exile), and completely unique biographies of Flaubert and Bunin, for which she was nominated for awards (one of which she won). She can’t decide whether she’s a pine dreaming of being a palm, or the other way around, so she alternates her travels between Greece and Russia; she’s been as far as Kamchatka.

Return to the source? By all means, as long as you proceed with extreme caution. An encounter with an utopiec—the ghost of a drowned man—or any other water demon, even the most alluring, is a far from pleasant experience. According to numerous folk legends, a source of spring water can lead you to the source of serious trouble . . .

I live in the city, but our house is next to the forest, and it so happens that our nearest local intake of Oligocene water is—untypically—in that forest. Water intake is an official term—it sounds technical and makes one think of the subjugation of nature: “taking something in” is like capturing or imprisoning it. It doesn’t reflect the ancient symbolic significance of the source, and indeed, the site to which we make our pilgrimage through the woods to fetch spring water is known as the source. It is a source in the symbolic sense, even if the professionals call it an artesian well, and can tell us how our water comes from in between layers of glauconite rock that’s millions of years old, dating back to the Oligocene era. Say what you like, the soul has no concept of an artesian well, but it knows what a source is.

We all go there at any time of year—whether acquainted or not, we recognize each other by sight, with our cans or reusable bottles stuffed into backpacks or bags on wheels. The little source summons us, and we enjoy visiting it, whether it’s a bright summer night or a winter afternoon. Each of us heads towards it, following our own route, but always in the silence that our forest-host gently but firmly

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Renata Lis:

A writer and translator, whose works include “Lesbos” (a book about love and exile), and completely unique biographies of Flaubert and Bunin, for which she was nominated for awards (one of which she won). She can’t decide whether she’s a pine dreaming of being a palm, or the other way around, so she alternates her travels between Greece and Russia; she’s been as far as Kamchatka.

Translation: Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Publish date: 19.06.2020

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Monika Kucia:

is a journalist and culinary superintendent at sialababamak.pl. Monika likes to bring words, flavours and people together. She helps foreigners learn about Poland from the tastiest side. She also creates culinary spectacles in which she encourages participants to eat leftovers, breathe in the smells of the basement, and sprinkle food with golden dust.

A crevasse in the ground, a passage between underground water and a stream, a keyhole, a threshold. A spring is not—as it is often defined—the beginning, but rather a secret place, a link. It allows a person to draw from the link between two worlds.

“The flowing water is ‘alive,’ restless. It is a source of inspiration, it heals and prophesies. Streams and rivers reveal power, life, and eternity: they exist and are alive. In this way, they gain autonomy, and humans continue to worship them despite other epiphanies and religious revolutions,” Mircea Eliade wrote in A History of Religious Ideas. The worship of water can be found in every culture, just like tales of the springs and the water of life.

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A Drinking Deer

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