Stumpwater

Growing up near the woods gives a kid a real chance to be stupid. I know. I excelled at stupid stuff.
"Teach a child when he is young, and he shall not depart from it. " I used to hear that alot. It is a true saying. I still occasionally aim for the unusually dumb. I don't realize it and I don't mean to, it just happens. I sort of miss my mark.
When I was young, I read a novel about some guy lost in the wilderness who had to eat bugs and stuff to survive. I was not about to try that kind of lunacy if I didn't have to.
HOWEVER, when I read that he drank stumpwater from an old decaying stump, I couldn't wait to try it. That was one long dry summer. I was praying for water more than any farmer ever did. I had the stump picked out for weeks before I ever saw a cloud. It wasn't a rain cloud, just a cloud - but it gave me hope. I cleaned the inside of that stump out of wood chips, dirt, bugs and other assorted goodies and kept it clean daily.
We had a water well but I could never use well water because the guy in the novel used RAIN water. I simply had to use rain water too. It had to be authentic.
It finally rained!! It was still raining when I ran to the stump. The wood was absorbing the water. It rained late into the night. In the morning when I got up, I again raced out to the stump.
YES!!! It was full of that precious life giving water. Funny though, after all the cleaning I had done to that hollow piece of wood, there were all kinds of little "floaties" in the water. I put my hand lightly in the water and tried to swish the nasties out. Then I cupped my hands together and dipped myself a drink. I looked carefully to make sure that water was clean, then raised my hands to my lips.
The stench of rotting wood assaulted my nostrils as I tried to pour it down my throat. It was survival, not a picnic. I had to drink it no matter what. If anything, it tasted worse than it smelled. I spit it all back out, except for what I had greedily drunk at first. I kept spitting all the way to the house.
I went inside and opened the refrigerator and grabbed the first thing I saw to try to get the aftertaste out of my mouth. GINGER ALE!! My savior.
I drank about half the bottle before I realized that the flavor was still there. That stumpwater was strong. I raised the bottle to my lips again when I saw the words "Barrel Aged" written on it. It has been forty years or so and I still will not drink that brand of ginger ale.