Living on River Time

Watermarks

For the past four years I’ve lived in deserts.

After growing up on the coast, the arid and harsh climate of the desert has been difficult to acclimate to. The air doesn’t wrap you in a warm blanket here. It scorches with heat or cold, and burns with wind or dust. And it rains.

But the rain doesn’t gently fall to the earth, caressing the trees and moistening the soil. It torrents, rumbles, and flashes. It rips the heavens open with rumbling power and molds the earth with artist’s fingers. It is terrifying and beautiful.

Living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and exploring the surrounding areas gave me a new appreciation for the power of rain. I distinctly remember seeing the deep trenches of the arroyos for the first time and wondering if they were really necessary, or just an excessive precaution. Of course, I would know better by the time I left.

I can honestly say that I didn’t believe in the beauty of the desert for a long time. But traveling through New Mexico, north-west Texas, eastern Utah, and later southern Idaho taught me otherwise.

Water leaves its mark wherever it goes. The trenches, mountains, and valleys of the llano estacado, mesas, plateaus, and canyons are evidence of water’s caress. They open up the history of the earth with every new torrent of rain and layer of sand compressed by wind and gravity. The layers of earth reading like a book, and exposing its timeline.

The air is dry, but it’s clear. The sky is open and endless. So open that you can almost see the curvature of the earth herself. And there is growth.

To me, the most amazing thing about the desert is that life still thrives. It thrives by making the most of the rain it receives.

Thriving on Thunderstorms

Albuquerque, like many places, has a unique culture. I have heard New Mexico lovingly called the “Land of Enchantment” as many times as I’ve heard it scathingly called the “Land of Entrapment”. The difference between these two extremes is perspective. Like many places, you have the choice to make the most of where you are, or fight against where you are with bitter resentment. Most of us muddle through a situation we’d rather not be in with a bit of both.

This is where thriving begins.

Part of my family originates in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Living and going to school in New Mexico was somewhat of a “coming home” for me. I remember first realizing this on a drive on 287 south to Carlsbad and passing through miles and miles of desert flatland. Land carved by floods and finger-like dry creek beds.

We Fed Them Cactus by Cabeza de Baca

In the two years I lived in New Mexico, I learned from a flood of new knowledge and experiences both personally and professionally. But none so deeply connected me to the thunder rumbling in my heart like Cabeza de Baca’s We Fed Them Cactus.

“He is gone, but the land which he loved is there. It has come back. The grass is growing again and those living on his land are wiser. They are following practices of soil and water conservation which were not available to Papá. But each generation must profit by the trials and errors of those before them; otherwise everything would perish.” (Cabeza de Baca, 1954)

This is where my grandfather ranched. This is where my family first carved their life. This was the distance between myself and my history.

Driving through the desert I glimpsed the realities my grandparents faced living and ranching in this wilderness, this terrain. Growing up, I was charmed by the nostalgic family stories of my grandfather working as a cowboy. But the realities of his life and work were far from rose-colored.

“Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed.” (Brené Brown, 2012)

Coming to this desert re-affirmed my families histories, but not in the way I had imagined. Instead of seeing the romantic beauty of a land I was told about, I was confronted with the reality of endurance as a difficult battle. A battle that would leave my grandfather’s bones broken and skin leathered by the wind, heat, cold, and sun. This history brought with it a new appreciation of his decisions and struggles. It gave a new meaning to my own accomplishments, and an appreciation for what has come before me.

I can only hope that the thunderstorms and harsh climates to come will continue their wisdom.