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Water
Witching In The Ozarks
Once one removes themselves from the
urban sprawl, skyscrapers, superhighways and what I perceive as the moral
decay in our cities, I believe a foreigner can really get to know America.
Where I live, here in the geographic center of the nation in a region
we call the Midwest, the citizens live on what is considered a hilly plateau
known as the Ozarks, though no one really knows who came up with the name.
The Ozarks are a forested area, and while crop farming does not do well
here, our fair state of Missouri is second only to Texas in cattle production,
which is nearly four times our size. There is a serious logging industry
in both hardwood and pine too, and the ground is rich in iron and granite
and boasts the largest lead mine in the world- a unique underground complex
that stretches for miles through mining tunnels. The Ozarks are also home
to the world's largest natural spring, named Big Spring, just 40 miles
from my home and the centerpiece of a National Park, and Mammoth Spring,
the third largest in the United States, just south of where I live.
One might expect the people to reflect the remote characteristics of the
land but my experience is that Ozarkians tend to be a rather hospitable
people and deeply rooted in Christian beliefs and family traditions. Outsiders
often regard these people as backward and ignorant, calling them a mildly
offensive term- Hillbillies. The stereotypical view of a Hillbilly is
a lazy, uneducated and often superstitious person, often (I'm not making
this up) of Irish or Scot-Irish descent and given to drinking an illegal,
homemade brand of corn liquor called moonshine from a clay jar.
Actually, the people in this area are generally hardworking and quite
well educated, and while some of the stereotype of the Hillbilly creed
may have been true 100 years ago, they still cling to woods knowledge
and pass-me-down wisdom from their Irish and American Indian mixed forefathers.
This lends a rich blend of racial flavors and traditions and many can
trace their ancestry directly to Ireland and to a native American tribal
lineage. There is still a strong sense of 'rugged individualism' in these
hills and mountains, where a person can raise his family in the woods,
chop wood for cooking fuel and heat and live off the land by hunting and
farming.
One of the strangest practices performed here is called 'water witching'.
This is an ancient practice that came with the first European settlers.
I had heard of it for several years and had seen it done on television,
but never knew what to believe.
Several years ago, a friend of mine was telling me how his grandfather
had been water witching back on their farm, so I asked him just what it
was and how it was supposed to work. Water witching -- he explained --
is a method of finding an underground source of water. 'Uh huh... sure
it is.' I answered.
So, he set about explaining how to perform water witching. "First,"
he explained, "you have to wait until spring when the sap is risin'.
Then you get yourself either a peach or cherry tree and select a fork
in the branches about the width of a pencil. Break or cut the limb about
20 inches (or half a meter) in length below the fork and strip off any
leaves or extra branches, as you only want just the forked section. "Then,
holding the 'y' of the branch splayed in your upright palms, the stick
pointin' forward, you walk very slowly until you find water."
I asked -- with considerable doubt -- if it really works. "It works.
You have to be patient with it. You may not find water just right off.
It c'n take an hour or more."
I asked what happened when I found water and he answered, "You'll
know. You just keep that branch gripped in your hands as hard as you c'n,
and you'll know."
Well, about a year went by until one spring day, I found an idle moment
and remembered what my friend had told me. Wild cherry grows in these
woodlands, and I hunted down a small tree growing near the road and selected
a branch, just as he told me, and held it in my upright palms and clamped
down hard with my fingers. I walked around my home, I walked around in
the pasture to the curiosity of the cows, I walked along the road to the
bewilderment of my neighbors until I was some distance away when suddenly,
something began to happen. I renewed my grip upon the twig as the tip
began to angle downward!
I stepped back, half believing what I just experienced. I wondered if
this was a truly weird experience, or if it was like the Ouija board.
I returned to the point when I first began noticing the movement in the
stick and repeated the process, stepping slowly. Again, the stick began
to point downward. Amazed, I ran back to the house and found two pairs
of metal pliers used for gripping and returned. Grasping the forked branch
in the two pliers, I repeated the process. The force was so powerful it
literally stripped the bark off the wood as it twisted downward until
the point of the stick was pointing straight down toward the ground, a
full 90 degrees from the starting position.
This was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen and it will astound
anyone who tries it for the first time. It really works. Being of a scientific
mind, I like to believe there is an explanation for everything. No other
kind of branch that I know of will work with water witching, and I suspect
it has something to do with the presence of cyanide or prussic acid in
the sap. My own theory is that the chemical composition in the wood or
sap is electrically or magnetically charged. Whenever the branch is moved
over an underground source of water, the current of that water is like
a natural generator and changes the polarity of the ground around it,
thus attracting the wood. It may even serve those varieties of trees to
seek water, extending their roots toward the attraction caused by the
movement of an underground source of water.
Better yet, maybe it should remain as one of those kinds of mysteries
of the world the good Lord never intended for us to understand but to
enjoy. Maybe all we need to know is that it works.
You can find thousands of websites on water witching or "dowsing",
but the best ones I found were at the following. The second website provides
an excellent photo of the method I used:
http://sepwww.standard.edu/sep/jon/dowsing.html
http://www.texas-ec.org/tcp/200water.html
By
Fred Roe
17th November 2002
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