The five-gallon jugs had become part of the packing list. Before setting off for Harding Spring, there was the practical business of making room for them. Twenty empty containers had to fit into the vehicle, along with everything else needed for the drive into the mountains north of Sedona. On the way home, those same containers would be full, roughly 100 gallons of spring water making the return journey to Arizona. Then, six or eight weeks later, the process would begin again.
There was nothing especially convenient about hauling roughly 100 gallons of water back from the mountains. Yet the repetition gradually gave the journey a significance that had little to do with convenience. There were photographs from summer, autumn, winter and spring. There were the familiar roads, the changing weather, and the physical weight of the containers. The water could have been bought much closer to home. Instead, every few months, the same route became part of their lives.
The Point at Which Water Stopped Being Invisible
Cory McCormack’s earlier life had been rooted in Las Vegas hospitality, nightlife and entertainment, during a period when the city was undergoing considerable cultural change. He was also a lifelong athlete, but the industry around him came with its own habits and excesses.
In December 2013, he stopped drinking alcohol. According to Liquid Zen’s founder story, that decision became a turning point, opening into a deeper interest in fitness, nutrition, longevity and wellness. Years later, after meeting Chrisy, that interest became part of a shared life. During the pandemic, the couple began exploring ideas around consciousness, intention, energy, frequency and spirituality, while Chrisy’s subsequent struggles with what the company describes as long COVID made questions about health and the body more personal.
After the couple moved from Las Vegas to Arizona, they found a home overlooking a small lake. It became a quieter setting for a period of life that was still marked by uncertainty around Chrisy’s health. Their search for ways to understand wellness more deeply eventually took them toward something considerably more elemental than another supplement or treatment protocol.
It took them to a spring.
Someone told them about Harding Spring in the mountains north of Sedona. They went to see it for themselves, filled their jugs and brought the water home. Then they returned.
Every six to eight weeks, they made the trip again, eventually bringing 20 five-gallon jugs and returning with approximately 100 gallons of fresh spring water. The ritual stretched across four seasons.
McCormack has described this period as the point at which he became a “water snob.” More significantly, it was when water became something he wanted to understand.
What Happened After the Spring Trips
Water is everywhere, constantly handled and rarely noticed. A glass can sit beside a laptop for hours without attracting a second thought. That ordinary quality was part of what made McCormack increasingly curious about it.
McCormack’s curiosity took him well beyond the question of where drinking water came from. He began exploring the work and ideas of researchers and thinkers concerned with sound, vibration and the behavior of water and matter. That included Ernst Chladni’s experiments with vibration and geometric patterns, Viktor Schauberger’s observations about water in nature, and Dr. Masaru Emoto’s photography and experiments involving water crystals, words, music and intention. The documentary The Secret of Water also became part of that exploration.
Those interests began to overlap. Sound, vibration, water, geometry and patterns found in nature increasingly became part of the same conversation for McCormack and Chrisy.
Why Put Zen in a Can?
By then, canned water was becoming increasingly visible. The format appealed to McCormack partly because aluminum offered an alternative to single-use plastic and can be recycled repeatedly. The language surrounding some of the new water brands also caught his attention. One brand, built around the idea of death, seemed to him like the wrong message to attach to something people drink every day.
His response was characteristically direct: if death could be put into a can, why couldn’t Zen? Liquid Zen grew from that question.
The name connected the product to the ideas McCormack and Chrisy had already been exploring together. Chrisy helped shape the visual identity, packaging and overall concept, while 528 Hz became one of the defining elements of the brand’s philosophy.
From a Spring in Arizona to Palomar Mountain
For several years, the concept remained a dream. Eventually McCormack left a job selling solar over the phone and committed himself to building the company. What followed involved learning an unfamiliar industry from the ground up: water sourcing, aluminum packaging, co-packing, manufacturing, logistics, supply chains and distribution.
The early production process brought setbacks and mistakes. Initial runs took place in Colorado, and the company eventually had to rethink and rebuild much of its approach.
Rana Prasad entered the story. What began as an investment and business relationship developed into an operating partnership and friendship, with Prasad ultimately becoming Co-Founder of Liquid Zen. During the search for a new direction, Prasad discovered Palomar Mountain Spring in San Diego County, California.
The company had begun with McCormack and Chrisy physically traveling to a mountain spring to collect water for themselves. Now the commercial product was returning to that same fundamental idea: spring water sourced from the mountains.
Liquid Zen’s Harmonized Spring Water is sourced from Palomar Mountain Spring and packaged in 16-ounce aluminum cans. The company describes the cans as PFAS-free and infinitely recyclable, and 528 Hz became part of the brand’s philosophy and identity.
In that sense, the sourcing story is not merely another specification on a product page. It completes a circle that began years earlier with those 20 empty jugs.
The Object Carries the Memory
Chrisy died before Liquid Zen fully launched. Her place in the story is not incidental. She was involved before Liquid Zen was a company, helping shape the name, visual identity, packaging and ideas behind it. The 528 Hz element is connected to her contribution. Photographs from the spring journeys belong to a period of their life together. The concept they developed together continued after her death, eventually becoming the company that launched without her.
A can of water does not ordinarily carry much biography. It is opened, consumed and discarded or recycled. Its purpose is almost completely immediate. This one, however, arrived with years of history behind it: mountain roads, heavy jugs, photographs, conversations and ideas shared between two people.
Making Water Part of the Ritual
Liquid Zen’s current presentation leans into repetition. Its 24-pack subscription, called “The Ritual,” is built around a 24-can delivery every 24 days, while the company also offers a 12-pack and, where available, a four-pack sampler.
The language turns a routine purchase into something more deliberate: water that is meant to have a recurring place in the day.
The original ritual was measured in mountain roads and five-gallon jugs. The version that reaches the consumer is considerably smaller: a can taken from the refrigerator, carried to a desk or placed beside a gym bag. The scale has changed, but the repetition remains.
After years of searching through wellness, longevity, frequency and spirituality, the story ultimately comes back to something basic: water, collected from a mountain spring and incorporated into the routines of ordinary days.
Returning to the Source
The story that began with a couple filling heavy plastic jugs at Harding Spring eventually became a company built around canned spring water. Along the way came Las Vegas nightlife, sobriety, Arizona, illness, spiritual exploration, production setbacks, a new business partnership and the loss of the person who had helped imagine the brand in the first place.
It is a surprisingly long journey for something that can be poured into a glass in a few seconds. Those five-gallon jugs marked a recurring journey that became part of a relationship, then part of an idea, and eventually part of a product.
The finished can has a much shorter journey: from the spring to a refrigerator, a desk, a gym bag or a kitchen counter. Its place in someone’s day may last only a few minutes. The story behind it took years.
