The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson

and is narrated by Brock Armstrong.

How your primal connection to water runs deeper than thirst.

The guy who kayaks and sets up camp along the same river each year,

the woman who gets through the first year after her husband's death one nightly hot bath at a time,

the girl who brings her thoughts to the ocean each evening before sunset. The boy who throws rocks in the lake

every day. The older couple who fall asleep to the sound of the waves. When was the last time you

spent a period of time next to or in water? Maybe it was a week or maybe it was 10 minutes. Chances are, no matter how little time it was,

it changed you somehow. It shifted your mood, it relaxed your thoughts. It softened the edges of your

day, and you left at least somewhat revived. Many of us grew up or now live close to a body of water. Still more of

us choose to vacation by water, spend a week at the beach, stay in a cabin by the lake, camp by the

river, etc. By extension, how many of you wish you did or are planning to. Even if we live in

the middle of a major city, think of how people congregate

around the city fountain to eat their lunch or simply sit and watch the people go by. The fact is

people invariably congregate around water, kind of like the kitchen at a house party. We're drawn to water like our animal brethren, despite the fact that we have faucets and water

bottles at our ready disposal.

Prehistoric human communities and later civilizations developed around water.

Naturally, it was a matter of survival then.

Humans can survive on average about about three days without water, despite those headline-grabbing outliers who manage a week or more. Lakes, rivers, and oceans offered meals as well as hydration. These days we can live hundreds of miles from substantial water sources, but be fully supplied

through modern modes of transportation.

Yet, as with so much of our physical and cognitive blueprints, the physiological draw,

and reward, operates beyond the context of necessity.

...