Wisconsin School of the Air; Afield with Ranger Mac; 16

The Wisconsin School of the air invites you to go afield with a range of Mac today boys and girls your guide will tell you about some water worries. And here he is not as tight you off on your hike down the nature trail Ranger Mack. Hello girls and boys. This is your day so up and away. Someone told me a story about a delegation from Turkey who visited this country to find out how Americans lived and worked and played many such foreign delegations come to America. Many of them visit the college of agriculture and the portress products laboratory here in Madison. This particular delegation was filled with wonder at the magic of our water supply. In their hotel rooms all they had to do was to turn the faucet hokus pokus. Water came out cold water from one hot water from the other. Even the cows standing in their stanchions had a contrivance. The cows knew how to use to get fresh water for drinking. It amazed them.

Maybe they came from a part of the world where water is so precious. It is still carried about the streets in skins on donkeys back and sold by the measure. Upon leaving this country they were asked what they would like best to take back to their own. They responded in chorus. Water faucets. We use water faucets each day of our lives and like anything else we use commonly the Wonder has vanished. If we have any curiosity about our water supply this curiosity ends with the faucet back of the prosectors. In all our cities is a rather complicated system of underground pipes of many sizes that lead to pumping stations from the pumping stations the pipes really deep into the earth to channels of underground

water or the pipes may lead to reservoirs. Behind dammed up rivers 100 to 600 miles away back of the rivers are the little streamlets that feed the rivers and back of the streamlets is the vast woodland watershed that releases water steadily to the little stream and back out of the watershed are of the clouds. So some of the greatest engineering feats of ancient and modern times are those that supply water to people living in cities. And this one it is not only supplied in abundance but it must be purified. No city could last long without an abundance of disease free water. The few of us ever stop to think about the importance of water.

Beyond the daily needs of the kitchen laundry and the bathroom water is needed in the manufacture and processing of everything we eat. Where you live in there is not one item in our daily living but water plays an important part of our own bodies are two thirds water. Each day we lose three to four quarts through perspiration. Breathing and elimination this last must be replaced. It is possible for a healthy person to go say 3 months without food but not longer than poor days without water. No water no life without water. All plant life dies. The land becomes a desert. So Nature made water. The great need for all life.

And after making it the great need and nature invented a plan by which water could be supplied to all life. She made the air thirsty for water. The warmer the air the greater the thirst the air drinks from the surface of the earth. From the clothes your mother hangs out on the line to dry. And each blade of grass and leaf every tree is a fountain at which the waters at the the air sips and the winds drink heavily from the vast expanse of the ocean surface and from the spray of each breaking wave the winds take a generous drink. The air drinks in small particles called paper. The way it drinks is called evaporation. These small particles are carried to the skies were clouds form. Currents of

air transport these clouds over the surface of the earth. The tiny particles of vapor unite to form drops which become too heavy and for the air to hold up and water are purified by its travels returns to the earth again as rain to feed all life. Rain is the source of all water that feeds the life on this planet. And when the rain supply more water than the Earth can absorb and you the water returns to the sea again in brooks and rivers there is no loss. That is just as much water now as when the earth was created. And the streamlets flowed to the river and the river flows to the sea and the water again comes back in rain into the hills where it used to be. Plants build up root systems to drink up this water

that follows as rain. Millions of hair roots extend out in all directions from each plant. A great scientist states that a single plant of winter rye has four million air routes which if placed end to end would extend over 6000 miles seems to have B-list to believe doesn't it. If you want to believe that the old oak that stands in your front yard or along the street that you pass each day that old oak has built up a root system which if placed end to end would extend around the world. If you want to believe that you would be near the truth and there would be no one to contradict you. Each plant great or small not only drinks water but the stems and leaves make little dams that hold back each rain and allow the water to soak into the ground to feed the

underground channels of water. That then maybe Springs and Brooks where water life may abound. Man with heavy drills bore into these underground channels and pools of water and finds there his main source of pure water plants die and decompose to make humus. And this you must act like a sponge to hold the rains that fall. So plants alive or dead. Hold the water where the raindrops fall. It is a wonderful system that nature has made to transport water over the last and to hold it for use after that falls. But when man removes the tree clears the surface of the earth of water holding vegetation drains the marshes straightens out the twisting meandering courses of streams

then water runs rapidly into streams carrying valuable topsoil with it and when rains and snows are abundant causes floods with great losses of property and much suffering. For our own happiness this would be the place to stop. With a picture of the kindness and generosity of nature in supplying so much water in the form of rain even though at times this rain does give us wet feet and it causes colds and spoils some of our parties. But we must part of the picture by introducing greater worries than wet feet and broken up parties. Why worry children anyway with worries when they are so helpless to remove the causes of these worries. The only way Ranger Mack

can answer that question is by stating that some time not very far in the future. You are going to be men and women and we want you to be more thoughtful and reverent than the older folks have been in the past with these gifts of nature. Since my boyhood days the population of our country has increased from 75 million to our hundred to a million doubled. Now we have some we have come to the place where we are beginning to waste more water and use more water than the clouds supply in the first place. We have removed most of our forests cleared the surplus of great areas of land drained most of our marshes exposed our heels and slopes Noles to the pounding of the rains. We are not holding back enough

water our streams overflow their banks in the spring and and dwindled to a trickle in summer. Most of our springs have ceased to flow and the underground pools of water have lowered the wet feet and spoiled parties. I have no worries compared with that of this city of water. In the next place we're using more water. Great cities and industries have sprung into existence. Steel mills coal mines gas plants breweries paper mills textile mills Camry's packing plants creameries factories chemical plants of hundreds of kinds irrigation of farms greenhouses mushroom farms no end to the kind of industrious and all take water that must come in rain. Some of this water comes from streams most of it comes from wells. When people

ran to the pump or the spring to get what are the home they were careful of the water. Now we have 40 million homes with water using appliances and we like to keep the lawns green with sprinkling. Theaters stores restaurants have air conditioning all tape water that must come down in the form of rain in the Southwest the scarcity of water is especially severe. Rivers have been tapped to supply water to cities and put irrigation of new lands open to cold cultivation. So many wells have been dug that the underground supply is in danger of giving out. Out west a farmer is a slave to his whale and irrigation ditch in many states in the Middle West. This shortage of underground water is being felt and now we are trying to get the better of nature by blowing

chemicals into the air and manufacturing our own rain to get around this shortage and the great industries not only use water but they have weights that must be disposed of. The easiest way is to run the wastes into the streams and let the streams take care of them. This destroys the purity and beauty of our streams. Fish and Wildlife disappear and they help the people it endangered and dreams as recreation places are destroyed. Wisconsin's two largest rivers are practically spoiled by pollution from upstream industries. Farmers are somewhat to blame for the pressure for more crops causes them to power the slopes down to the streams bring silt builds the stream beds and fertilizer poisons the water. The enjoyment of beautiful clear streams with a constant flow of water

free from pollution with abundant what her life living verion with banks filled with wild flowers and birds and wildlife finding refuge there. The enjoyment of these things is the right of every American boy and girl. These are the gifts of water when water is wet. Many of our youth do not have this enjoyment and this fact is one of our water worries. May each day find you smiling until we meet on the trail again next week. And may the Great Spirit put sunshine in your heart today and forever more our Heep much the familiar Indian farewell brings us to the end of another trip afield with Ranger Mack. He'll be back next week boys and girls with a radio hike down a nature trail where you'll find that it tails have interesting tales. This is the

Wisconsin School of the air.