The Secret Knowledge of Water

No water around here...

... or is there?

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The Secret Knowledge of Water; Discovering the Essence of the American Desert, by Craig Childs.

I have always loved to read. When I was a child I read anything and everything and carried home armloads of books from the library. When I finished with those, my mom would hand me some of the books she used in her classroom. The books I read in those days always stayed with me, unlike some of the books I read now, and then accidentally re-read, having forgotten them!

There was a book, Our California Home,* used back then in California fourth-grade classrooms, that absolutely enchanted me. It presented the history of the state through its use and control of water. I never forgot the opening chapter, where a thirsty child on a hot summer night went into a bathroom gleaming with chrome and porcelain to get a drink of cold, sparkling water. After slaking her thirst, she let the water run over her hands and arms. It turns out that my childhood imagination embellished the memory, as when I went back to read the book again (that good Beez found me a copy on Alibris) the hot summer night scene was much smaller and less significant than I remembered it.

I have just finished the book, The Secret Knowledge of Water, and it was another beautiful experience. Childs shows us how desert lands are defined by water, rather than by their lack of it. He introduces us to hidden desert waters, fearsome floods, and to tiny springs that disappear underground during the heat of the day, only to reappear at night, fish and all. I loved this book so much that, when it was over, I read every single item in the pages-long bibliography; marveling that I had learned a bit about desert hydrology, hyporheic invertebrate assemblage, and geomorphology.

And I had loved every bit of it. Read this book and you will never see deserts in quite the same way again. I know that sounds trite, but it's all I can tell you.

*Our California Home, by Irmagarde Richards. California State Series, Sacramento, 1933. 

A Dam in the Desert?

Las Cruces arroyo after a big rain

To live in the desert is to be aware of water. That seems obvious--living in a dry place, you learn to carry water at all times, to keep yourself hydrated, and to landscape with native or drought tolerant plants so that you reduce or eliminate the need for watering your yard.

However, when we first arrived in Las Cruces, we were surprised to find a great big earthen dam paralleling the highway. A dam in the desert? A dam with no water?

It's the Las Cruces Flood Control Dam and, as you can see from this cycling map (below), it is highlighted in red right next to Highway 25. Coming from a wetter climate, I am always interested to see that there are housing developments behind the dam--if this were a traditional dam like Hoover Dam, this is right where you would find Lake Mead.

You soon learn this about living in a dry place that gets just 8 - 12 inches of rainfall annually: When the rain does come, it sometimes comes hard and fast, drains off the mountains and mesas down into the river valley, and might lead to flooding if not otherwise diverted.

Back in the 1970s, the flood control dam was constructed. According to the City of Las Cruces Storm Water Management Design Standards, they are aiming for protection against a "100 year storm event."