A new relationship with water is required

Having lived in the high desert of northern New Mexico for the last eighteen years my relationship with water has transformed. I remember as a child and teenager living in the Bay Area, a stone’s throw from the San Francisco Bay, water was everywhere. In the estuary, in the rivers, crashing against the rocks along the coast, even in our minds and actions as we made attempts to use less of it, water, regardless of what felt like living in an endless drought, surrounded me. It was precious. 

Here in the desert water is also precious and having a new relationship with it was required. I see the memory of water everywhere. Some of the marks are subtle, others obvious. My senses have developed a different language to the water's cadence and magnetism. I’m more apt to notice the slightest smell when it’s present in the clouds or begins to seep through the miles of acequias. 

Today I’m surrounded by a landscape of deep gorges and creosote, miles of mesa and juniper, cactuses of all types and delicate leafed wildflowers which make good use of storing water. In a desert ecology plants are wise to have smaller blossoms and narrow leaves thoughtfully aware of how to regulate monsoon rains and ambient moisture. Night bloomers take advantage of the moonlight. 

When I teach gardening, or working with plants in general, I discuss the nuances of how to water. It always comes down to presence – the art of attention. Water is just one of so many variables for life. How it behaves will be as different as the desert is from a tidal bay and therefore the conversation and relationship with it must adapt. 

It is a subtle, personal, and responsive relationship that is quite hard to articulate. So I generally encourage you to create or put yourself in environments that allow for direct experience. Be curious, I say. Observe and explore with all of your senses. With water, you must be receptive, responsive, and rhythmic. 

Last night as I drifted off to sleep, I began to dream of water and the conversations I have with the element. I love water. Specifically, the ocean tides, the flow of water through channels small and large, or the sound of water as it saturates the earth. 

The tides, to this day, I still find mysterious. At one point I did learn the actual science behind how they function. Yet I prefer to think of them as magical and magnetic acts swelling in relationship with the moon phase or making the equator bulge with water. They allude to a force, like none other, that pushes and pulls with an invisible hand. Tides recall water’s mystery and magnetism, like another form of moving and breathing. If you experience the daily flush and surge of this, how lucky you are. 

Be it a mountain stream or the rush of winter runoff, the sight and sound of running water is captivating. How susceptible are the eyes and  ears – how easily they become transfixed. Why is this I wonder? 

Water is a kind of soothsayer. Where it originates or ends, matters not. There’s not an exact starting point nor end. What it knows, the life it gives, the memory it shares inexplicably captures the attention of body, spirit, and mind.  

Here in the garden, a wild mix of xeric sun loving flowers and vegetables are planted and one of my favorite things to do after a rain or when I’ve watered is to crouch down and listen to the ground drink. 

It clicks and pops as it drips and drains into the soil. At first quite loud, then trailing off in a faint echo. Beneath my feet, a million micro channels are being filled, cooled, and saturated. Sometimes it can be quite loud, other times a whisper, but it’s happening. The earth willingly receives it, from which leaves, needles, berries, and petals swell. Today, may you too be moved by the magnetism of water.