Water abides at the heart of life. Oceans, lakes, ponds, springs, rivers, creeks, clouds, rain, snow, ice. And through evaporation, the cycle from sea to sky to storm evolves anew. A story begins when water breaks and parents rush to the hospital. Floods and avalanches, tsunamis and hurricanes, not to mention droughts, famine, and fire, are capable of bringing that story to an end. Water is, or ought to be, as revered as any god. After all, it hosted the birthplace of our ancestors—think sand-sized Saccorhytus, think Tiktaaliks, think tetrapods—and continues to sustain all creatures that reside on land, fly through air, or still swim or float along.

Consider the transcendent nature of a glass of water. How crucial water is to myth, literature, religion, science, commerce, recreation, to all manner of cultural activity. Yet—due in part to human neglect and greed and destructiveness—lakes are drying up, icecaps are melting, rivers are falling, oceans are rising, rains are so compromised with toxins we dare not drink from cisterns.

If our relationship with water has always been crucial, it has never been more critical than now. We sometimes find ourselves at sea, bewildered and uncertain. We sometimes put to sea, embarking on adventure. We dive, sail, and surf, drop our line at a fishing hole. We sit with a book on the beach, watch the tides by moonlight. Some pray beside still waters while others frolic in the waves. We row, row, row down the stream thinking life’s but a dream. We are known to go off the deep end.

Conjunctions:80, The Ways of Water explores the nature of water in our lives and those of our fellow beings. Through fiction and poetry, ecological and climate writing, in a multitude of genres, this issue brings together a wide community of writers to plumb this most essential matter so basic to the survival of all flora, all fauna on this fragile water-blue planet.