In the Wash New arrivals and first-time visitors to the desert southwest might be struck by the sight of low highway bridges that span dry, dusty depressions in the desert, or slight dips in the road that bear “Do Not Enter When Flooded” signs. Looking at a map of the area, one sees many streams and rivers—lines of blue ink snaking across the land. But on closer inspection, one sees that the lines are not a continual stretch of blue; rather, they are a series of broken dashes and dots—mapmakers’ code for “sometimes water flows here”, or, sadly, “there used to be a river here”, or the more clinical “seasonal or intermittent stream”. It is a desert, after all. By definition, deserts are dry; they are hot. Here in southern Arizona, the Sonoran Desert receives about 12 inches of rain in a year. Compared to Seattle’s 37 annual inches, or even the 15 inches Los Angeles receives, that’s not a lot of rain. Perhaps more than any other, that one fact helps explain why the desert looks as it does: dry, brown, sparsely populated with unusual looking plants and animals. Rain—water—is essential to life. With it, deserts bloom; without it, they don’t. With it, plants grow; without it, they die. Humans can go perhaps two weeks without food; but can die in less than twenty-four hours in the desert without water. Twelve inches of water a year isn’t much. Why, then, the need for highway bridges, warning signs by dips in the road, or marking on a map the courses of streams and rivers that may not run at all in rain-poor years? Because when it does rain here, it tends to rain all at once. The short winter rainy season and the longer, more predictable summer “monsoon” season concentrate our yearly rainfall into a dozen or so major events: wild, powerful thunderstorms that can drop two inches of rain on the desert in thirty or forty minutes. Like tropical storms, summer monsoon storms typically come late in the afternoon. The day’s 100-degree-plus temperatures heating the moisture in the air until, in a clear blue sky, suddenly cumulus clouds form, exploding into thunderheads 30-40,000 feet high in what seems like minutes. One can enjoy lunch outdoors under a cloudless sky, only to glance out the window a few hours later to see trees bent by 30 mph winds, dust storms, and huge valley-swallowing black, black stormclouds spitting lightning and growling thunder like the Day of Judgment blowing into town. And like the Day of Judgment, these storms bring both redemption and damnation. And both in the same form: water, rain. Without the rain, without the storms that bring it, nothing here would survive long. Years without good winter rains yield a barren spring landscape of shriveled, dying plants and not a single wildflower. Years with good winter rains mean a glorious, multicolored carpet of spring wildflowers below lush green cactus, trees and shrubs. The rain is redemption. But the rain can also be damnation. When a large volume of water is dumped on a parched desert all at once, the ground cannot absorb it all. The water puddles in any shallow depression, the puddles grow, overflow their depressions, and begin running, cutting channels in the earth. With really big storms the water sheets—running downhill across the surface of the desert like a spilled drink across a glass table. The running water finds the channels depression, the puddles grow, overflow their depressions, and begin running, cutting channels in the earth. With really big storms the water sheets—running downhill across the surface of the desert like a spilled drink across a glass table. The running water finds the channels that centuries of storms have carved: we call them arroyos, or slot canyons, or washes, or dry river beds. Sometimes, if the storm is mild, these channels, dry for months, will run softly with water like the babbling brooks of New England. Sometimes, if the storm is wild, they will flood in a flash—a wall of water leading the downstream charge as if a dam had breached; frothing, crashing, sweeping up everything in its path, cutting new channels and thundering to its destiny. There are stories of automobiles pulled from a dip in the road and carried away, of people hiking in washes who noticed water rising around their boots and who were chest-deep or swept away before they could reach the bank. For all of the potential for violence and damnation, the rains are generally viewed as desired, life-giving redemption. Folks here wonder aloud when the monsoon will arrive, as if it were some village benefactor, which, of course, it is. Storm clouds building in the afternoon become the talk of shops and offices all over town; people trying to read them—will they make it to here? Will they bring rain, or just wind? The storms themselves are notoriously fickle and individual. One part of town will get an inch of rain, while people a mile away will get nothing, watching the storm develop, move into the valley, and pass them by without even a nod. Asking, as if towards some secret crush at a school dance, “why not me?” Typically, the storms come in late afternoon, but that’s no guarantee. They can steal into town just after dark, or awaken one in the early morning pre-dawn hours. They can come slowly and softly with music and sweet smells, like returning migrant birds or wildflowers or stars after sunset. Or they can come suddenly and harshly with leaking windows and overturned patio furniture, like drunk, noisy neighbors, late-night calls from ex-lovers, or illness. +++ It’s late in the monsoon season now: early September. The atmosphere’s been unsettled the last few days, at least to one who lives here. There’s a clinging humidity in the air; it lays heavy, altering the clarity of the light and the brightness of sounds. This morning dawned with more of the same, with uncertainty and some measure of trepidation. Softly this time, like a string concerto, the sky darkened, the clouds grew, and the rain began to fall. It’s been raining steadily for hours now. In the yard, puddles have formed and joined together, rivulets have become streams, and everything is thoroughly soaked. As the rain lightens, I notice the tiny green leaves of palo verde trees and creosote bushes clinging to drops; and I decide to go to the wash to see if it’s running. A small wash runs nearby. Not even large enough to warrant a broken blue line on a map, it is one of many that drain the mountains to the west into the river to the east—like a small vein in the circulatory system of the land. I’ve been living here for three years now and I’ve only seen running water in the wash once. So, I put on some old shoes and start towards it. The air is cool and damp, the light diffuse and lustrous. Almost at the wash, I become aware of sound: at first I notice the scarcity of bird calls—they’re still high and dry, I suspect—and then, the steady primeval white-noise of the planet: running water, a rare and almost-alien sound in the desert. I quicken my steps and turning the last corner see the wash below: churning and frothing and moving—come alive with a torrent of water. I make my way down the gentle-sloping bank for a closer experience. The water is high—maybe a foot deep—and running quickly—more than quickly, careeningly—and brown from the sediment and soil it carries. The air is cool and filled with the sound of motion and change. The first thing I notice is how chaotic the rushing water looks. No smooth-surface, lazy, meandering stream here—this is water with a purpose, all whitewater rapids and recklessness, drops flying from the surface of waves, separated and sent flying, carried aloft for a moment by the raw energy of the flow. The force of it surprises me; the rushing water as if hurrying to some destination. And it occurs to me that that’s exactly right. This moving water is completing a cycle of evaporation from the sea, rainfall, and a rush back to the oceans. Like a savannah migration of wildebeest, autumn and spring rotations of ducks and songbirds, the morning and evening commutes of city workers and schoolchildren, the water does indeed have somewhere to go, somewhere else it needs to be, and it rushes forward as it can, channeled and impeded by natural and artificial obstacles—changed by, and changing those obstacles in the process. At my feet an eddy pool has formed. The specific vagaries of this tiny part of the wash have channeled some of the water away from the main rushing flow. Split off, separated from the flow, the water here calms quickly; slowing, settling, into a shallow pool. The lingering momentum and transference from the main flow cause small waves to ripple across the surface of the pool and lap against the tiny shore. From my view, I fancy the eddy pool as an ant’s seashore or great lake. Bits of bark and leaves are carried into the eddy pool and swirl about—making visible the still-moving water like words do thoughts. Some brush against the shore and settle, marking the high-water line until another, greater flood comes along. Others deflect from the shore, continuing to spin restlessly about the pool. A few, tugged by the edge of the main flow, dart out off the pool and slip back into the torrent of water rushing to the sea. I watch for awhile, observing the unfolding destinies of bits of twigs, trying to uncover reasons that some stay and some go. I wonder if there are eddy pools in human thought, in emotions, in world history, in space-time. I am unsuccessful. Downstream, I see a catclaw acacia surrounded. The rushing waters breaking around it, eroding the very planet from beneath it, isolating it on its own tiny island, tugging at its lower branches, urging it to release its grip on the earth, on its past, and to follow the water downstream. The acacia holds tight to the spot of land that is all it has ever known, unwilling or unable to let go. The acacia is not water, it does not exist to flow to the sea, its cycles and journeys are different ones. For the acacia, this must be a faith- shaking experience. It needs water to survive, and water here can be scarce most of the time. When the rain began, it must have been a welcome event. But now, life-giving water has become life-threatening; too much, too quickly—it’s a matter of scale. And of coincidence: by choice or by chance that acacia is growing where it is, for years, a fertile, stable, encouraging spot, but now in the path of rapid change. As the flood continues, even the wash which contains it is changed; its banks undercut, tiny islands and sandbars formed, destroyed, transformed. I study the ever-changing- but-never-changing pattern of waves on the moving water’s surface. Each second the pattern of waves is different, and yet at a different level the same. The water moves on but the wave patterns remain, in flux, and I think I am looking at eternity. But these waves are not sustainable; their existence dependent upon a continued input of water and energy—like life, or art. In a few hours they will be gone, and gone nowhere. But with the next flood storm they will return. I know that the shapes and sizes of the waves are influenced by the contours of the wash bottom below the rushing water; where there are large rocks below there are large waves above. I try to read the contours of the wash bottom from the pattern of the waves, like watching the clouds to see the wind, or gauging a person’s feelings by their expressions and actions. The pattern of the waves oscillates as the volume of wind and water fluctuate, changes slightly as the surface below is re-contoured. The wave pattern is a system and I try to predict how the pattern will progress. I am unsuccessful. I wonder if there is a basic randomness to the Universe, or a basic order, and if it varies with scale. Are there contours or unknowns in the cosmic equation? Does the jaguar know of the quark, the quark of the jaguar? Either of them of me? Is my life a wave? An acacia? The water? Are we one? Art and science are the lenses through which I see the world. Are they wide enough to see the patterns? Are they strong enough to see the pieces, the bonds and relationships? Mesmerized, confused, by the water’s changing surface, I’ve not noticed the waters rising around me, tugging at my calves, reaching for my hands. I step into the flowing water and stand—the tugging force of the water just balanced by my feet on the bottom, my body oscillating with the fluctuating volumes and forces, with the unsettled shifting between wanting to go and wanting to stay, between exhilaration and fear. The waters break around me, then, as buoyancy equals gravity, through me, and I am in equilibrium—a metaphysical Lagrange point. I float thinking of origins and destinations while observing the journey. I am two people: one looking downstream, one upstream. I try to pick out bits of twigs carried by the turbid, turbulent waters and track their journeys downstream. They rush by too quickly. I see other things carried by the water: stones and pebbles, being reduced to smaller stones and pebbles, polished by friction and collisions; leaves and clumps of leaves; a Kestrel feather, scraps of paper and styrofoam, humanity’s debris. I think of the Flood, of the Jordan, of absolution and forgiveness. As the waters rise and rush on I see shimmering reflections of light and color. I see crowds, civilizations, great armies on horseback and others in tanks, swept up by the waters. I see good deeds, unfortunate accidents, emptiness and great endeavors carried past. I reach out for childhood, for opportunities lost and moments cherished but they slip by. In the flow I see great temples, Twin Towers, churches, mosques, embassies, cliff dwellings, pyramids, stone arches. I see Messiahs, Emperors, Dictators, Kings, Lamas, Peasants, Farmers, Journeymen. I see gardens, languages, old- growth forests, tropical rainforests, buffalo herds, Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, Passenger Pigeons. I see my father and his father, departed friends and family, JFK, RFK, MLK, Stephen Biko and John Lennon, births, deaths, rebirths. I see promises broken and kept, kindness, arguments, illnesses, celebrations, honesty, deceit, fear, pride, flower petals, a marriage. I don’t know how long I’ve been there when the waters begin to recede. I become aware of my weight, of the temperature on my skin, of sound. I step out of the wash. The water is a soft flow now; in an hour or a day the wash will be dry again. To new arrivals, first-time visitors, the wash will look solid, as if it has always been here, and will always be this way. A more careful or more experienced observer will notice the clumped line of debris on the shore, the bent lower branches of creosote, desert broom and acacia arching downstream, the slightly darker, still-damp depressions of the eddy pools, and will know something of the past. But all that can say is “this happened once”; of the future it will say nothing, except, perhaps, “this could happen again.” New seeds, left in the flood’s recedence, will germinate, send down roots, rise up towards the sun thinking “I’m on good ground, I shall flourish here.” And so they will, for a time. They will flower, shelter, produce seeds, and thirst for water. New arrivals and first-time visitors will think I’ve always been here, have always been this way, will always remain here, have chosen here. But while we need water, we are not water. Our lives move in waves, the floods taking us abruptly downstream. We are uprooted, the soil we stand upon undercut, and we are rushed and tumbled downstream. We can be diverted into eddy pools or carried to the cycle’s end. I have been carried here by floods, and I may yet be carried away by others. As may we all. Will we see them coming? Will we resist or submit? Will we know chance from fate? Will we know redemption from damnation? Absolution from erosion? Will we know the eddy current from eternity? The promised land from the journey? Will we know when we are new arrivals or first-time visitors? +++++++++
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