Still: The Journal

In the summer of 1995, I watch my father shape two 

long pieces of copper into divining rods. He bends 

them at the ends with plyers, a brutal and swift act. I 

imagine these to look like toy guns. I know better than 

to say this out loud, and my father searches for water. 

He walks from one end of the driveway to the other, 

and I see the rods pull together. My father marks the 

spot on the ground to avoid when the machines come 

to dig in the following days. I ask my father about the 

rods. I need to understand what has just happened. 

This is, of course, an impossible thing to answer.

My father says he is “dowsing,” and explains to me

as best as he can. I ask him if the rods must be made 

of copper. I ask him how it works. “I’ve used sticks,

too,” he says. “I don’t know how it works. It just does.”

My father shows me one more time, and I watch the spirit 

of God flow through his calloused hands and answer him.

Divining is the act of acquiring knowledge by supernatural 

means—the rods don’t matter, as long as someone teaches 

you to hear the voice of the divine. Water witching is the

occult name for the same act, outlawed by the church, used

by our ancestors to find sources of water for their families.  

I hear the spirit of something holy speak through my father, 

pointing to water. The sound is like the one I dream of now

frequently—heard late at night, at the peak of winter, when

the snow has fallen hard, the clouds have dissipated, and the 

moon shows softly. If you are quiet then, you might hear it. 

I am grateful that whatever Appalachian witchcraft my father

inherited also flows through my veins because no matter how

often I’ve tried, the divining rods do not work for me, and I

cannot get that same spirit to work through my hands. I do not

and cannot hear God through the trees, even though late at night,

all I want is to hear the voice of someone who will never die again.