Meanwhile, eight feet below ground, my basement is suffering the opposite problem. A deep, dank moisture greets my nostrils every time I open the basement door  — a smell somewhere between musty and moldy and if not quite evil then full of foreboding. I pick up a piece of paper on the floor and it is wet to the touch just from existing in the basement. A little leather stool in the corner is dotted with mold. The wetness creeps into everything. By August , I imagine it will rot my guitar case, rust my bike chain, and wrap its mossy tentacles around everything until the journals turn to goo and all my photos stick together.

I lament this situation to my lady Anjali. “This city is supposed to have been built on a swamp. Doesn’t grass grow in a swamp? The front lawn is dry as a pizza oven, but the air in the basement is wet as a — as a — ” I search for the right metaphor for really, really wet.

“Isn’t that what a dehumidifier is for?”  she says.

I paused. Anjali has a way of getting to the point.  “Uh…right!” I say.

I get online and buy a DeLonghi dehumidifier that is ENERGY STAR rated and plug it into the outlet in the basement. I program it to 60 percent humidity, which is an approximate 40 percent reduction from the existing basement atmosphere. Less than a day later it shuts itself off; it has already sucked up a bellyful of water.

Now the basement smells a little less Gollum-like. I carry the tank upstairs and pour it in the sink. Eighteen hours later the reservoir fills up again. I picture little water molecules levitating out of my surfing wetsuit, being free-thrown off of my old AYSO participation ribbons.

Much as I enjoy this little swamp reclamation project, something still feels off. I can’t put my finger on it. When I pour all that water down the sink, I feel a twinge of regret.

Then, as I reluctantly water the lawn one night, aiming the hose at the biggest swatches of brown, I realize what is wrong with my disposal system:

I can take the water from my basement and pour it on the lawn!

So now I regularly visit my little basement friend, pull out its collection basin and wrestle it up the stairs, through the front door and into the soupy D.C. heat. I shake all 45 pints on the deadest patches of grass. This is ridiculously satisfying.

That I can attack the source of the gnawing evil in my basement — snatch it right from the air! — and redistribute it, Robin-Hood-like, onto my starving lawn — well, it feels noble, heroic even. It is so 21st Century to be engaged in this kind of re-using. Or is it reducing?

Or — wait a minute — is it recycling … down into the earth and back into my basement?

The Swamp Reclamation Project is a post from: The Ferris Files