The Secret Knowledge of Water
   Craig Childs
   Illustrations by Regan Choi
  2000 Time Warner Books
    ISBN: 1570611599


In the American West, where water politics is intimately entangled with power, this author sets out into untramelled reaches in search of desert water in a seemingly barren & unforgiving environment.

Part memoir, part paean to the infinitely changing landscape & part lessons in geology, geography & genealogy, The Secret Knowledge of Water lures you out of your safety zones to follow Craig Childs' footprints across scrublands, along river beds & deep, deep into voice-filled canyons.

This is a magical read, to be savored for years to come; returned to with the same delight a parched explorer returns to a shadow-cooled pool.

Craig Childs writes: “...I grew up thinking that water and the desert were the same...”

“...An aquatic kingdom that turns its chemistry inside out between day and night, and exists every now and then in a scalding desert, invites not resilience as much as it does ingenuity...”

“...This kind of prophetic knowledge is not uncommon among dwellers of ephemeeral waters. The adaptation is called phenotypic plasticity, meaning the ability to alter the body's shape in step with its environment...Development rates in water holes depend not on the original size of the pool but on how fast it is drying...”

“...My path wrote cursive letters in the face, a clumsy language that would be erased by wind tomorrow...”

“...The two sides of the Grand Canyon...divided by the Colorado River, have different spring water...on the north side, where the Kaibab Plateau flushes out large underground volumes, the taste of the springs does not alter much from place to place...below the South Rim, I have found that water tastes differnt at nearly every canyon...South Rim water comes out slowly and tastes ancient, biting the tongue like seawater. It is old water, havig seeped twenty-five hundred feet...to wait indefinitely in underground baths of minerals before leaking out...the water...beneath the North Rim, does not wait...”

A word about Regan Choi's artwork: imagine it “life” sized -- immense jutting bones of our planet towering above cactus & tumbleweeds; an Escher-like botanical drawing in exquisite detail, of water hole shrimp eggs or The Shrine or Sonoran desert spires or after the flood as seen from the floor of an overwhelming canyon. I hope they are hung in a gallery somewhere for all to see & I hope there are dozens more & that these were merely the idiosyncratic choices of the author.

In Craig Childs' writing there's a spiritual feel for the desert & its denizens coupled with an hypnotic story-telling skill. If you think you've already been there & done that, take up The Secret Knowledge of Water & sip of its delicate essence.

The chapter titles in & of themselves tell much: First Waters; Ephemeral Water; Water That Waits; Water That Moves; Seep; The Acts of Desert Streams; The Sacrifice of Children; Carrying Away the Land; Chubasco; Haunted Canyon; Floor at Kanab; Fear of God; Following the Water Down -- follow this diviner's steps into a bleak, silent & empty land & meet the crowded, noisy & energetic world he knows.

Craig Childs imparts his knowledge of this serest of landscapes with grace & fluency.

More from Craig Childs:
Stone Desert: A Naturalist's Exploration of Canyonlands National Park
Crossing Paths: Uncommon Encounters with Animals in the Wild
Grand Canyon: Time Below the Rim, photographs by Gary Ladd
Grand Canyon Stories: Then and Now with Leo W. Banks
Colorado with Gavriel Jecan & photographs by Art Wolfe
(06/10/01)

Rebecca