I am old enough to remember pumping water from a well.

It wasn’t on the prairie. You didn’t get there by Conestoga wagon. It was in a public park, close by a hiking trail where two rocks formed a natural bridge. Two stone outcroppings that almost met, like kissing lips, and you could walk from one to the other, if you didn’t mind jumping the gap. Only a few feet, easy to leap if you were young and daring. CLIMB AT OWN RISK, a sign said, egging us on. All us latchkey kids, with no bike helmets.

After the walk, after the leap, there was the water. Clear and so cold it almost burned. It tasted of nothing. Of something better than nothing. It tasted of snowfall and pine needles and mountain streams. Of spring peepers and fiddlehead ferns and darning-needle dragonflies and ancient oaks, never cut. It tasted of the hike to get there, rocks on the trail cutting into the rubber bottom of your Keds, the ones you got at the start of every summer and outgrew by fall. It tasted of the iron pump handle, ornate in the way everyday things used to be, gracefully curved, heavy in your hands. You had to press your whole body into that handle to move it, almost ride it, feet leaving the ground as the handle swung up, the crack and groan and holding back of that pump, as if it wasn’t going to let you drink without paying a price.

And then, when I’d almost given up, the stupendous splash, so I’d get wet every time, but never mind. I would stick my whole head under and drink. Sometimes I’d fill bottles and take them home. Best water in the world, my mother proclaimed, and scoffed at those pretentious rich people with their bottled water, their perry-yay.

Those nights, after the walk, the climb, the pump, I’d lay my head on soft pillows and tumble freefall into sleep, dreaming of cold mountain springs.

Was the water that good? Or is it a story we tell ourselves, a hangover from Puritan ancestors who valued effort over ease, like the Girl Scout leader who made our troop churn butter by shaking cream in spaghetti sauce jars, “like pioneer girls.” Like my old boyfriend who insisted only French press coffee was worth drinking, and I’d boil the water, testing temperature with a candy thermometer, grind the coffee to the finest grind, push the plunger down, press as hard as I could, and after all that, the coffee tasted like…coffee. Only bitter, with grit at the bottom.

Are we lazier today? Less willing to value labor? We press a button in the refrigerator and filtered water comes out. We program the coffeemaker and a cup comes out, ground and brewed. Maybe, I think, we are saving ourselves for bigger battles. I sip my coffee and it’s smooth, free of grit. I drink every drop.