The Secret Knowledge of Water There Are Two Easy Ways to Die in the Desert: Thirst and Drowning

by Childs, Craig

• ISBN13: 9780316610698
• ISBN10: 0316610690
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-05-01
• Publisher: Back Bay Books

Summary

The "essence of the American desert," as the subtitle of Craig Childs's book has it, is water. A desert, by definition, lacks it, but when water does come, it comes in torrential, sometimes devastating abundance. Childs, a thirtysomething desert rat with a vast knowledge of the Southwest's remote corners, knows this fact well. "Most rain falling anywhere but the desert comes slow enough that it is swallowed by the soil without comment," he observes. "Desert rains, powerful and sporadic, tend to hit the ground, gather into floods, and are gone before the water can sink five inches into the ground." The travels that Childs recounts in this vivid narrative take him from places sometimes parched, sometimes swimming, from the depths of the Grand Canyon to the dry limestone tanks of the lava-strewn Sonoran Desert. As he travels, Childs gives a close reading of the desert landscape ("the moral," he writes at one point, "is that if you know the land and its maps, you might live"), observing the rocks, plants, animals, and people that call it home. Some of his adventures will remind readers of Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire--save that Childs writes without Abbey's bluster, and with a measured lyricism that well suits the achingly lovely back canyons and cactus forests of the Southwest. By turns travelogue, ecological treatise, and meditative essay, Childs's book will speak to anyone who has spent time under desert skies, wondering when the next drop of rain might fall. --Gregory McNamee

Author Biography

Craig Childs -- naturalist, adventurer, desert ecologist, and frequent contributor to National Public Radio's Morning Edition -- lives in Crawford, Colorado. His previous books include House of Rain, The Way Out, The Secret Knowledge of Water, and Soul of Nowhere.

Table of Contents

Introduction---First Waters	xi
PART ONE---EPHEMERAL WATER	1	(72)
Maps of Water Holes	7	(36)
Water That Waits	43	(30)
PART TWO---WATER THAT MOVES	73	(92)
Seep	85	(8)
The Source	93	(26)
The Acts of Desert Streams	119	(46)
PART THREE---FIERCE WATER	165	(100)
The Sacrifice of Children	175	(12)
Carrying Away the Land	187	(12)
Chubasco	199	(12)
Haunted Canyon	211	(10)
Flood at Kanab	221	(10)
Fear of God	231	(18)
Following the Water Down	249	(16)
Epilogue---The Arrival	265	(10)
Bibliography	275	(10)
Index	285