I was out taking pictures of the river this morning. It wasn't very cold overnight, and the days are very warm, so it's amazing how fast the ice is melting.



This is that same spot a couple of days ago:



I found this forked stick, and it reminded me of water dowsing, which is right up there with Ouija boards for reliability, according to Wikipedia.



But I found this website Dowsing Works.com written by the American Society of Dowsers where the belief is alive and well.

"Dowsing For Water ...

To start, choose a dowsing tool that seems most comfortable for you to use. The dowser is usually seeking flowing, underground, potable water suitable for drilling and pumping.

To begin, assume the search position. Start walking across the area of interest. Mentally ask the dowsing tool to indicate when you cross a vein of potable and palatable water which, for example, is less than 300 feet deep and would deliver currently, year round, five gallons per minute from a well to the surface. Therefore, you have limited your search to exactly what you are searching for; excluding other targets of all kinds.

You should indicate to your dowsing tool that you wish it to indicate when you are over the center of greatest flow and a suitable location for developing a well. To determine approximately the depth in feet, with your dowsing tool in the ready position, ask if it is greater than, for example, 10 feet. If the answer is yes, then ask about 20 feet, etc.

Using the same system, ask about the gallons per minute recoverable to the surface; for example, is it greater than one gallon per minute, two gallons, etc. This method may be used to determine other qualities or aspects; for example, pH, temperature, etc."


Now, mind you, the dowsing tool referred to above is either a forked stick, a couple of wires bent to an L-shape, a plumb bob, or a flexible wire. Since an extended tape measure is flexible, maybe it would work. I don't know about you, but I would feel silly asking the stick the pH of the water it just supposedly located for me. Maybe a stick is smarter than a box of rocks, but I wouldn't want to ask too much of it.

Be this as it may, my Dad believed in dowsing, and in 1980 he hired a guy to figure out where our water well should be drilled. It's on the edge of the yard. The dowsing must have worked, because we have enough water for the house, but it's not plentiful enough to water the grass, and he had to send a sample to Sears to find out the pH, etc.



Back then, I was working at a tire store, and not long after the well was completed, my mother called, just furious because she was doing landscaping or something in the backyard with the pickup, and backed into the top of that well, ruining a brand-new tire. She wanted to get it replaced before my dad ever found out it had happened.

That was the story of their lives: her scrambling to cover something up, even dumb, unimportant things, because he was a yeller, always looking for an excuse to fly off the handle. Twenty years after she died, I asked him if he ever knew about that tire, and no, he hadn't. Best kept secrets, and secrets best kept.