NOTE: This essay was written maybe 5 years ago, and was written while I was in college. It needs work, but it is one of my favorites. Enjoy
Memories of water send chills down my spine and bring tears to my eyes. I will share a few of them though they will not be as powerful in the retelling…
I stand with the burning hot stone of the canyon wall at my back with sweat running in rivulets down my spine. My hat brim shields my face and sunglasses cover my eyes, yet still I squint against the glare. Suddenly the wind shifts down canyon and brings a cool wet breeze that a moment before had been swirling around a high waterfall, I inhale the sweet, clean scent and listen to the distant thunder of the falls reverberating off the high red walls of the canyon.
This memory was of a constant and predictable water source, guaranteed to be there even in the driest of years. Another memory involves a less predictable source of water: rain…
I am driving my car down a lonely stretch of highway, the windshield wipers sweeping away the final remnants of a violent summer storm. The rain has stopped where I am now but in my rearview mirror the grey curtain of rain continues to drift across the land behind me. Even though the day had been hot before the storm’s passage, a chill runs through me as I roll down my window. I let the cool wind rush through the car and laugh as the occasional stray raindrop hits me in the face. But what is overwhelming is the smell that the storm has left behind. It is the sharp sweet fragrance of crushed desert sage and the smooth earthy scent of wet sand mingling together with a myriad of other smells such as those from the occasional desert flower and even the acrid scent of the wet asphalt beneath my tires. It is an incredible smell and the moment in time seems to last forever, but then the sun returns and the smell dissipates into the thirsty air.
Rain is an amazing thing in the deep desert. Plants that had seemed brittle and half-dead the moment before suddenly come alive with green and by the next morning the entire desert will be carpeted with wildflowers.
Water is vital. I have run down canyons with a pack full of empty water bottles hoping to find a solitary pool to sustain my group for the next day. Water is also a force of nature. I have run from water with my heart in my throat praying that I would make it out of a rain swollen canyon, before the wall of a flood sweeps me into oblivion.
There is one final memory of water I would like to share, it is the quietest but is somehow more powerful than the waterfall or the storm—it is the desert pool, the oasis:
I am hiking across a long, hot cirque of redrock. Twisted juniper trees send gnarled branches skyward from a few hollows where enough sand has collected to cover their roots. Around them, upthrusts of white-capped Cryptobiotic soil forms miniature mountain ranges, holding together the small bowl of sand and catching any droplet of moisture that falls on it. An Ephedra or “Mormon Tea” has also found purchase here, along with an Opuntia cactus (also known as “Prickly Pear”).
I continue across the semicircular valley, feeling the heat of the rock through the soles of my boots; around me red and white banded pinnacles of Cedar Mesa sandstone reach for the sky like misshapen fingers. The rock cairns marking the trail disappear into a small gully, which I enter using steps of piled rock and the occasional juniper root. The National Park Service attempts to maintain their trails using natural materials and usually succeeds unless the terrain is too severe (e.g. the ladder into Salt Creek Canyon near Peekaboo Spring that is five times my height). After a short time walking in the dry wash, I climb onto the side to skirt a small pour-off and soon come beneath it.
I have entered Eden: The air is noticeably cool and wet here in the shade of the stone and trees surrounding this green jewel—a prime example of what is often referred to as a “Hanging Garden”. This name is well deserved for I can see vast curtains of mosses and ferns growing straight out of the slick sandstone. Water drips from the walls of the canyon, and off the tips of the ferns; this water was originally rain which is just now seeping from the rock one drop at a time eventually collecting in the smooth bowl of the pour-off. I look into the pool and can see tadpoles of the Great Basin Spadefoot toad (the only toad with vertical pupils, like a cat) wriggle their way along the bottom of the pool in pursuit of Fairy Shrimp which scud hastily away, upside down, their translucent legs motoring.
A few caddis fly larvae crawl laboriously along the pool bottom, their cumbersome homes of pebbles and juniper twigs making rutted trails in the benthos. Jewel bright dragonflies dance on the pool surface, looking for other insects to sate their ferocious appetites. I place my hand gently into the water, taking care not to disturb its many occupants, relishing its cool caress on my dry, sunburned skin. I stand up and look around the hidden oasis one last time before plunging back into the heat.
Water is the antithesis of the other desert elements such as scorching sun and parched stone; it is the other side of the balancing act, and there is just enough of it to sustain the myriad of flora and fauna that call the deep desert home. We humans try desperately to harness the desert’s precious water in a vain attempt to make this alien environment seem more like our homes in greener places where water is not an issue. What we fail to realize is that the desert is our home and it is not it that must change; it is ourselves. We seem to think that we need yards of cultivated grass, carefully manicured to the same height as our neighbor’s (except that one guy down the street with all the dandelions—You know, the one that they talk about every year at the homeowners meeting?)
This need for a lawn is so great in some places that people will even illegally water at night during a water ban. Lake Powell (which I have mentioned before and will keep mentioning until they drain the damn thing…) is an example of how we cater to our water-rich lifestyles—at the desert’s expense. I am just as guilty as the next person for taking advantage of water, especially glorying in a long, hot shower after spending several days in the backcountry (you get sand in places that you didn’t know you had). Or maybe by letting the water run while I brush my teeth or do the dishes. Little things—that build up to be big things. I really admire the people in the cities whose Xeriscaped yards (think “gravel lawn”) are surrounded by the lush green lawns of their covert, night-waterer neighbors.
I am not saying that we shouldn’t grow anything in canyon country-not at all-I’m saying that we should think “is this necessary and/or useful?” when deciding if we should invest water in anything. I have seen the desert bloom under the right pair of hands using little or no excess water. Many farmers use ancient varieties of corn, beans, and squash which grow using what little moisture the Colorado plateau receives. This is known as dryland farming. An excellent example of this are the small organic farms you’ll find surrounding most desert towns like green satellites. Many of these farmers use the dryland method so know as you bite into a large, peach from the Cortez farmer’s market, that it is not a product of waste or excess, but that it is one of those hard-earned rewards of maintaining the desert balance.
Outsiders (water-fat scions of soggy eastern cities) decry the desert as being “too dry” and “inhospitable”. They are wrong, the desert is not too dry nor is it too wet. “Cactus Ed” Abbey states in Desert Solitaire that “there is exactly the right amount of water in the desert unless you try to build a city where no city should be.” While many cities once had a reliable water source, they have outgrown it and have to rely instead on augmented sources of water especially reservoirs made by damming a river.
Some cities should not exist at all. Phoenix, Tucson, Scottsdale, the shimmering pit of Las Vegas to name a few. Albuquerque was a nice place once, so I hear, as a cluster of mud and adobe huts strung along the banks of the now much damned Rio Grande. Now the city has exploded and is a mire of retirees and drug runners that is sucking water from reservoirs and aquifers many miles away. The Sandias stand like a black cloud on the city’s edge, a dark and brooding wilderness. But even the tortured face of the Sandias is a relief from the dirty diapers, soft drink cups, and occasional body parts strewn along I-25.
Some people like it here, even prefer it. They are mad but I am glad that they are living happily in America’s armpit—it means that I don’t have to. Nothing throws off the balance of the desert like a city, but take heart! After we run ourselves into the ground at the end of the oil dependent roller-coaster, the ensuing population crash will empty the cities. Some will bounce back, the smaller towns, like Durango, Mancos, and Dolores with their rivers. Moab will keep right on ticking, the mountain bikers drinking by firelight and lamplight once Salt Lake goes under and turns off the power.
The west will survive and will be wild once again; the roads will decay from lack of maintenance and the great tombstone blocking Glen canyon will begin to erode away, finally a great crack will appear and the Grand Canyon will be scoured with a great flood of silt, tepid water, beer cans, sunken boats, monkeywrenched bulldozers, dead bodies, anasazi mummies, and all-around, all-american filth.
Lake Foul’s demise will be like the lancing of a boil—with 50,000 cfs of water to cleanse the wound. Centuries later, our descendants (those of us who survive) will ride their horses across the silent desert and wonder at the crumbling strips of asphalt, drifted with dunes, leading to skeletal buildings of twisted metal and glass. Perhaps they will make a national park out of it like Mesa Verde, a monument to America’s one size fits all greed.
-Charlie Kolb, Hesperus Colorado
