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A nature scientist with a true gift for writing excellent literature. While I did learn a great deal about the desert and its water, it was the fluidity of the prose that captured me. The author's voice was soft but compelling throughout.
If you are a huge fan of the desert southwest--try these new releases from Jo Moore (a student of Tony Hillerman at UNM), however a distinctly different writing style (literary southwestern fiction): ADOBE DREAMS; THE ANGLO; TURQUOISE AND OBSIDIAN: 14 STORIES; OTHER OBSESSIONS
His use of metaphor and poetic language in The Secret Knowledge of Water creates a beautiful and moving story of the desert and its water that reads like a song. Craig Childs becomes a part of the environment he writes about and takes the reader with him. Thankfully, he has written many books, and I intend to read them all. I didn't want the book to end. The only other natural writer I can compare him to is Terry Tempest Williams. He writes with the same love and passion for the land.
He fully immerses himself in the desert, walking dozens of miles alone in unmapped territory, exploring canyons cognizant of but unworried by the danger of flash flooding, and taking more notes per mile than any other author I've read. The Secret Knowledge of Water beautifully encapsulates the book cover's warning: "There are two easy ways to die in the desert-thirst and drowning." The twelve essays cover everything from ancient maps of desert water holes and endangered desert fishes to shrines honoring the power of water and tales of harrowing escapes from raging floodwaters. He translates his notes into lyrical prose that truly honors the ecosystem he so clearly loves and transports readers into wild places they might never discover on their own. Any of the essays is a worthwhile read on its own, but together they paint a complex picture of how geology, geography, ecology and humans shape the ever-changing desert. Craig Childs never writes from an armchair or the outside looking in.
Further exploits include donning a wet suit and entering a cave gushing water into the Grand Canyon; exploring creeks draining the Pajarito and Atascosa Mts, between the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts along the AZ/Mexican border; and, after several other stops, visiting a site on the Tohono O'odham Reservation, where legend has it that four children were sacrificed in order to stop a flood pouring out of an opening in the desert floor. Recounting his two-year quest for desert water--"water that is actually out there, that has been out there for thousands of years," Child's The Secret Knowledge of Water is a must read for any desert aficionado. Tracking down little known sources of water from "obscure research papers, my own recollections, stories told to me by old men, (and) a 300-year old desert map prepared by a Jesuit missionary," Childs first takes us to the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, AZ--"some of the driest land in the Western Hemisphere," and then to the Thousand Wells area, on the AZ/UT border.
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