Dasani, Anyone? ***

Everything you want to know about water ( and a lot more )

 This post has turned into something of a short dissertation and will appear in five successive editions. The first - the introduction - is really just an excuse to talk about Manitou Springs , the Garden of the Gods, Pikes Peak, and the Cog Railway  that goes to its summit.

In case your wondering why all of this should appear in a food blog, along the way, we will, as our title suggests, throw in a lot of infor- mation about water.  And if you remember to get back in about five days, the real point of this blog will be revealed - the nine, natural mineral springs spouting off around the town in Manitou Springs.

Pikes Peak in the background; Garden of the Gods in foreground. ( Photo from Pikes Peak Labs )

If you are in the vicinity of Colorado Springs, skip town and proceed 5 miles further west to the foothills of Pikes Peak and the nine mineral springs of Manitou Springs.

We recently were there visiting our son (a freshman at Colorado College in Colorado Springs) and intended to launch the travel and food section of Food, Wine, Life’s Pleasures by contrasting the pleasures available from the ostentatious but amazing Broadmoor Hotel, (Our count revealed at least twelve restaurants one of which requires a dinner jacket surrounded by a Disneyland for rich people – think horseback riding, PGA golf, aromatherapy, etc. ) vs the funky, but still beautiful sights of Manitou Springs (the Cl iff House or …. but mostly think water – natural mineral water spouting out of nine spigots scattered about town - each of which ( if you can get past the rust or green or off-purple slime surround ) combines the harmony and passion of the stations of the cross with the civic pride of a Benson Bubbler.

All of this would have been preceded if not preempted by America the Beautiful composed in 1893 by Katherine Bates, an English teacher at Wellesley College, who while teaching a summer school session at Colorado College, summited Pikes Peak and was justly awed by the beautiful spacious skies, amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties.

Unfortunately, dinner in Manitou Springs proved disappointing and we never really got back to the Broadmoor so that leaves us with the water, which, for better or worse, is the subject of this post:

 

Dasani Anyone?

The water business is all about fear.

Lurking beneath scholarly analysis of municipal water quality, the dangers of fluoride and chlorine and parasitic cryptosporidium lies a salesman hawking a water filter for your faucet. With less hawking but no less fear mongering, the NRDC,  Think Outside the Bottle  and Water Wars Worldwide combine to reveal the forces of privatization that threaten our most precious natural resource. And then there's bottled water - the worst offender. It’s all about refreshing purity, after all, even if as much as one third of all bottled water, including both Dasani (sold by Coke) and Aquafina (sold by Pepsi) is just tap water.

But of course they are both purified – purer than pure, we suppose.

So what’s to say about water: ( Hints about coming attractions)

• Evian spelled backwards
• Benson Bubblers and Bull Run Water
• Taste Tests and Water Wars
• The Washington D.C. Blind Taste Test
• The Nine Springs of Manitou Springs
• And, of course, A Lot More