Scarlet Sims - Peach Tree, 2026

16x24 watercolor on paper

My mother built her house on Carrion Crow Mountain, just outside of Atkins, in the River Valley, where people there say they live in the foothills of the Ozarks. At the time, there was no city water, so she hired a well witcher (Dowser) to come to the property and find water to drill the well. Mr. McGee was a tall man wearing jeans and a cowboy hat who used dowsing rods that he walked back and forth until they crossed. In a town with 36 churches in the 1980s and an intense dislike of witchcraft (suffer ye not a witch to live), I found it interesting the entire community was OK with dowsing for water. My grandmother told me well-witching had a long history in the Ozarks and was a respectable trade. If Mr. McGee had not had the rods, she said, he could have used a freshly cut peach tree with a “Y” shape. The dowser would then put thumbs on each cut in the Y and walk back and forth until the end of the limb pointed down to the ground, where there would be water. She said she had double checked the dowser’s work and found his same findings. The well we dug was strong and clear and kept our house flush for decades before being replaced with city water in the early 2000s.