“How could a place defined by the absence of water be
defined by the presence of it?” --Craig Childs, the Secret Knowledge of water.
When I chose to move to Arizona, I gave little thought to
fact that I was moving to the desert or how radically different this would be
to any other climate in which I have lived. In the last nine months, I have
become so much more aware of water: when and how I drink it, when and how and
how much falls from the sky, how it defines the landscape and living creature’s
relationship to it. I'm including a few quotes from a book "The Secret Knowledge of Water" by Craig Childs which express much more eloquently than I could some essential concepts around water in the desert.
Each time I go into town for groceries, I also load up the back of my car with empty gallon water jugs, which I fill with tapwater in Flagstaff and bring back. This is a choice I make because the water that comes out of my tap comes from local groundwater that naturally contains arsenic, at slightly above EPA recommended levels. I then watch the water jugs empty themselves, about one per day, for my cooking and drinking water, until I get a chance to replenish them.
And this is only at home – when I go hiking or backpacking
in this area, planning water sources is much more critically important. In the
desert, there are a few types water sources: springs, streams/rivers, and
potholes: natural depression in rock which fill with water and, depending on
the size, remain filled for a matter of days or up to weeks to months if they
are large enough.
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| Pothole water in the Grand Canyon |
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| Spring in the Grand Canyon |
All of these but the largest of rivers and potholes are
seasonal, and can be found completely dry in the summertime, making careful
research, planning, and budgeting of water essential. I recently went on an overnight
backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon where none of these water sources would be
available, so we each carried 11-12 liters of water (around 25 lbs). That is a
heavy load!
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| Colorado River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon -- always has water, but hope it to be clear like this not muddy after a rain! |
Much more dramatic than my own personal relationship with
water, is the way in which water defines the natural environment here. Surely
the natural springs on the mesas at Hopi played a role in their settlement here over one thousand years ago. In some of the villages, you can still see the natural
potholes dug deeper by ancestral Hopi to store water on top of the mesas. And
to this day, the Hopi perform ceremonies and dances to bring the rain their crops need to survive and thrive. When the rains come, they seem to be another entity altogether from the rain I
am used to anywhere else. The open landscape allows you to see for miles in any
direction, and see storm clouds dumping rain and lightning in a patchwork of
places with some areas left bone-dry in between.
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| It's raining on the buttes in the distance, but not on the road i'm walking |
Which brings me to the flipside of water in the desert: its
momentary abrupt abundance and resulting floods. In the space of a few minutes,
flash floods can turn a dry rock channel into a living, seething, roaring river
with water and rock defining one another: “the shape of the canyon is the shape
of moving water, and the shape of water, like the canyon, will amend to the
slightest bias. While resisting and accommodating each other, water and canyon
both become patterns of the same intelligence.” --Craig Childs, the Secret Knowledge of Water.
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| Dark Canyon in Utah, carved by water |
Closer to home is the sandier
version of canyons: the numerous ‘washes’ that meander across the Hopi and
Navajo reservations. They appear as dry creek bottoms, lined with cottonwood
trees, and fill with water only for short bursts of time, but enough to define
their physical paths and resulting ecosystem. Paved roads have bridges with
signs marking the wash as if it were stream or river (which is sometimes); unpaved
roads simply go through the washes, sometimes heralded by a “do not enter when
flooded” sign. Families that live off of
some of these dirt roads not infrequently find themselves trapped, unable to
venture out from their homes to town, work, or appointments at the health
center due to mud or a flood.
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| Mud cracks as it dries the day after a rain |
“To say that the desert has no water is a tantalizing
misstatement. It is believable. But to look over this raven land and know the
truth – that there is immeasurable water tucked and hidden and cared for by
bowls of rock, by sudden storms, by artwork chiseled hundreds and thousands of
years ago – is by far a greater pleasure and mystery than to think of it as dry
and senseless as wadded newspaper. It is not only drought that makes this a
desert; it is all the water that cannot be seen.” --Craig Childs, the Secret Knowledge of Water.
