Earth Strength, where walking to get water is a daily pilgrimage.
We can survive without eating for over three weeks, but we’ll be dead within just three days if we don’t drink!
Water is one of life’s most essential compounds and mans relationship to it has been both profound and reverential. It has been the subject of prayer, poetry, art, music, story and even the founding of civilisations. Its essential free flowing wildness has been the inspiration and metaphor for our own personal liberation and freedom.
In the past we knew the sources of our water; we protected them, we worshipped them. They lay quite literally at the centre of community.
As well as being the foundation of community, water is also the foundation of good health.
The wellness industry is ‘awash’ with ‘scientific’ and apocryphal advice on how much water to drink; what potions and powders to add to it and how to ionise and alkalise it. Yet despite all of this, too many of us will go through our lives in a state of partial dehydration.
For us to feel fully alive, to be able to move and think optimally we need to be appropriately hydrated. To achieve this there is nothing more required of us, than we drink water. It’s as simple as that! Of course if that water is available from a local spring then so much the better, but if not, then whatever you have to hand will suffice.
At Earth Strength we take hydration seriously. We are fortunate here in Facinas as water remains at the centre of the community where we have our base. Quite literally the reason for the village being here is the abundance of water which has powered the ancient water mills, watered the small vegetable gardens and provided drinking water for thousands of years.
The water from the spring of el Chorrito is living water, mineralised by its 200 year passage through the mountain that towers over the village. I have spoken with people who’ve driven 50 miles just to partake of its life sustaining properties.
Every day there is a slow pilgrimage up the hill to the main spring. I pass people of all ages going to collect this special water. For me there is a great joy in seeing people in their 80’s walking the two kilometres up a steep winding track through ancient cork oaks, two empty five litre bottles in each gnarled hand.
These people move with an ease that many people half their age would struggle to achieve. Straight back, measured tread, strong and connected to the ground upon which they walk. However, there is something else, an indefinable contentment and inner peace which radiates from these good people of Facinas as they collect their water.
Some will have walked this route for over 70 years, yet there is a freshness in their experience. What is clear as they walk up the hill, is that they still deeply enjoy this moment, connected as they are to the lifeblood of this village.
Sitting at the spring, I always talk with my fellow water bearers whilst we wait our turn. All of them smile and say the same thing time and time again; “beautiful sweet water, magnificent view.”
I then watch them depart, walking down the same track, still upright and strong. An ancient version of what we might now call a ‘farmers walk.’
It strikes me that I am witnessing some truly functional movement. Not some intellectual facsimile, but the real thing. Here is cardio, strength, stamina, stretching, squatting and bending. It is also far more than that; it is a meditation and a celebration of place, it is the very essence of connected living and wellness.
This is a Blue Zone in action; the democratised reality of health, embedded within daily living and devoid of gimmicks and fads. This is rooted living.
Ultimately what the people of Facinas have is what all of the modern approaches to wellness strive to attain. Here people move with ease and imagination to the demands of their environment, they enjoy exceptional health, vitality and contentment and live long and truly happy lives.
This is where we practise being human.
Move the body Still the mind.
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