Have Love, Will Carry Water
Winter Hydration in the Colorado Desert
On the evening of the winter solstice, I burrowed into my sleeping bag before 6 pm. Just a few hours earlier, Aaron and I hauled 50-pound packs of water into the Colorado Desert. This is nothing new for me, but the intensity of the requirement was: the region’s water sources are so sparse to support wildlife that drinking from them is prohibited.
The only water to be found is sequestered in sparse oases scattered throughout the desert. These are marked by emerald bundles of native fan palm trees that are ubiquitous in the Southern California suburban neighborhood where I grew up. The other giveaway is bird song and the occasional coyote. Not wishing to disturb any thirsty critters, we never got close enough to see the water itself, which may or may not have been underground. And that was the magic of it.
Carrying water in the desert potent reminder of the thin margins that sustain life in a region that imports nearly all of its water from the Colorado River. The pipeline that carries it to the cities to guzzle was just a raven’s flight from our wanderings. The 242-mile diversion cuts through a mountain range along a major Highway, and its presence has beckoned my curiosity since childhood. Atop the peak, the water infrastructure was not visible, but the Salton Sea was. This being, the Colorado River’s poorly recognized intermittent terminus in a past life. And a story for another story.
Solstice is not a metaphorical condition or holiday when you are living outdoors. In Pacific Time it starts getting dark at 4:40 pm and stays that way for nearly 14 hours. Despite the mild temperatures, the body adjusts to the darkness by inducing long slumbers, sometimes in two segments. About halfway through our trek, I noticed my journal entries encapsulated dreams in greater proportion to our waking experiences. The dreams came vivid and lucid, cracked open by trios of owls calling into the night. Through the simple routine of long walks, and longer dreams I began to wonder when our night visions began to lose credit as part of our reality. The truths in my visions seemed clearer, no matter how absurd the scenes to convey them were.
The long nights offered ample recovery between water carries, but a walkabout like this requires more heart than strength. I’ve dreamt about a trip like this for years. Often, when trying to recruit companions, I have been met with eye rolls and head scratches. No doubts were haunting Aaron and me, even in our ritual acknowledgment that we were in for another very long night. Exquisite light followed always.
“Do you ever think we are walking too far away from society? Getting too comfortable with the distance?”
It’s a necessary question for anyone *out there* enough to relate to the rogue penguin in Werner Herzog’s Antarctica film. But with a plastic dromedary of Colorado River on my back, traversing the same range carrying that same water to millions of people along a busy highway, I was assured we still had much much further to walk to entertain a thought such as that.