Water in the Desert, Part II

I finally finished Craig Childs’s book The Secret Knowledge of Water, and I highly recommend it. There are many great stories and the kind of thought that comes from spending many hours alone, facing one’s self. One particular vignette caught my attention.

Craig Childs discovers a river that only runs at night. During the day, the water evaporates in the sun and is sucked up into the vegetation until you can see only rocks. But at night, when the sun goes down and the plants become quiet, the river re-emerges. First pools gather. Then trickles begin. Finally the river begins to flow and insects and fish that have spent the day hiding buried deep in the gravel appear.

The thought of such a place, of finding it, seem to me a natural wonder as great as discovering the Grand Canyon.