Water Divining?
The art of finding water with your body
I
n New Mexico drilling a well is pretty much the only option for a consistent, reliable water source if you aren’t connected to a municipal or government water system. So if you’re planning to live in the country, and in my case, the Zuni mountains in particular, drilling a well needs to happen. But well drilling is quite a crapshoot in the arid, mysterious under-terrain of New Mexico. Within a mile of my building site there are multiple wells drilled with huge variances in depth and flow. For example one nearby well was sunk to 400 feet and delivered over 30 gallons/minute of flow, while an equally nearby well was drilled to 700 feet and delivered only 1 gallon/minute. My original thought was that’s just the luck of the draw, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and you simply drill your well in relation and location to your homesite. But when I called Jesse Elliott of Pie Town, NM to inquire about drilling a well his first question to me was “Did you find the water yet?” I didn’t understand the question, and my confused answer in the negative led Jesse to explain a bit more. He said that you need someone to come out and find where the water flows under the land, as that can make a huge difference in well cost (depth), and performance (gallons/min). Still confused I asked about the equipment needed to do such an analysis. Jesse laughed, “All I need is my two metal rods and a bit of time to walk your land, and we will see if you go any water under there.” Through the course of our conversation I slowly began to understand that Jesse was talking about “water divining”, a pseudo-science of a person having an ability to locate underground water sources simply by holding metal rods or sticks. I was a bit skeptical of the process but my natural curiosity was stronger and I invited Jesse to come to my land so I could review the process in person. In the meantime I did a bit of research about water divining and there seems to be lots of opinions on the actual efficacy the process. Historically it seems that divining the location of water dates back many millennia. In the Tassili Caves of northern Africa, an 8,000-yearold cave painting depicts a man holding a forked stick, apparently
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using it to search for water. In fact, historical images that appear to represent water divining appear all over the world—in the temples of Egyptian pharaohs, in ancient Chinese etchings and more. The only scientific study of significance I could find was conducted by the German government around 1990. In the 10-year study period, researchers paired up experienced geologists and water diviners sending them to dry regions like Sri Lanka, Kenya, and Yemen. Scientists were surprised to find that many of the water diviners were spot-on. In Sri Lanka alone, drill teams drilled 691 wells under the supervision of water diviners and found water 96% of the time, as opposed to just over 50% without them.
