sent from: London, UK. destination: Corte Madera, California, USA

My grandfather asked me to go to the well and fill up the water jugs. The well was outside, on the other side of the property, in reality no more than a few steps but to me then a vast expanse of no-man’s-land, baking in the Spanish summer sun. The botijos hung heavy off my arms and I dreaded how they would be full. I started the well motor and listened to it gurgle through the pipes to emerge clear from the hose. I waited a couple of seconds, already toasting and squinting in the sun, my glasses slipping on my nose. I filled the botijos and hauled them back to the house.
“Let me try it”, he asked me. “I don’t think you went to the upper spring, you drew from the lower spring.” I didn’t know what he meant, and his disapproval made my stomach flip.
“My Abuelo would ask me to get water from the spring, and there were two springs in the mountains here – the upper one and the lower one. I would get to the lower one and fill the botijo, I didn’t want to climb to the upper spring. When I returned he would chastise me for not going to the upper spring, where the water was fresher, cooler. You didn’t let the water run long enough before filling the botijo, You didn’t get it from the upper spring.”
I never knew if that story was true but it felt true, and cold water has always been something I’ve prized, as though I’d climbed to that upper spring for it.