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The Secret Knowledge of Water: Discovering the Essence of the American Desert

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I've lived in the desert, I've hiked in the desert, I've camped in the desert and I've cursed the desert but nothing I have read before made me understand and love the desert like The Secret Knowledge of Water does.
Until I read Craig Childs' essay, I never gave much thought to water in the desert except that without it you die. Childs paints a vivid picture of the juxtaposition of desert and water in all of its manifestations. I can still picture the pools of water in the tinajas of the barren, sun-baked Cabeza Prieta and the thunderstorm-fed floods on the Arizona Strip. I can feel the terror he must have felt squatting on a ledge in a feeder canyon of the Grand Canyon as flood waters rose and swirled around him and his relief as they receded, leaving behind tons of debris. I can also feel his awe at the power and majesty of nature at the same time. I can feel his exhilaration as he bathes in a deep, cool waterpocket after a long day's hike. And I can sense his deep respect for the original peoples of the desert and how they have adapted to its caprice.
It is obvious from his style that Childs has an abiding love for the desert. If you know and love the desert, you will find The Secret Knowledge of Water a fascinating read and come away with new respect for the desert and for the waters which both nurture and shape it.

Secret Knowledge is an extremely descriptive first-person account of a traveler's journey though the desert in search of water and its associated experiences. Childs describes his locales with a variety of methods: use of metaphor, scientifically and spritually. He intertwines information from a number of scientific areas, including, biology, geology, anthropology, archaeology and of course hydrology. The only negative thing I could say was my desire to learn about more desert areas--his book limits the reader to the Grand Canyon and some areas of Arizona. Also, the book read so quickly--it ended and I wanted more. I guess I'll have to check out some of his other books.

This book by naturalist Craig Childs belongs on any Edward Abbey bookshelf, where writers have fallen in love with the desert Southwest and portray it eloquently on the printed page. Childs is more scientist than environmentalist, but he has Abbey's fascination with wilderness adventure, which takes him in search of what he regards as the most elemental aspect of the desert - the water to be found there. These searches take him far into remote areas of the vast Colorado River watershed, mostly in Arizona, including the canyons that feed into the Grand Canyon.

The book is divided into three sections: still water, streams, and flood. We discover that if one knows how to search for it - and the first inhabitants of these areas did know - there is water to be found in plentiful supply. Likewise, there are spring-fed streams that flow during certain seasons, and in and along both kinds of water there is a host of different life forms, plants and animals, each place representing a specific and evolving ecosystem. Childs' eye and ear for detail and his scientific knowledge join to create vivid accounts of the discoveries he makes as he explores. We learn, for instance, how pools of rainwater in the desert wastes become populated with forms of aquatic life and how these survive, even through long periods of extreme drought.

For me, a particularly harrowing adventure was his exploration of a system of caves from which a stream of ice-cold water emerges high on a canyon wall near the Grand Canyon. Others include his pursuit of floods in the making in this same system of canyons following summer cloudbursts, and he underscores the perilousness of his curiosity by describing the deaths of other hikers and campers taken by surprise by flash floods. Often he travels alone for days and weeks at a time; sometimes he takes along a companion. What he writes of his experiences is consistently full of wonder, as well as a realization that human interference with the natural order (pumping from aquifers, as just one example) is rapidly and permanently altering ecosystems that have adapted to the desert environment over millennia.

Craig Childs savors the desert and all its happenings in his quest for water. He tastes storms, let sands flow through his fingers like so much spice, explores caves and canyons. In short, he gives us a poetic, knowing, sensual and thorough survey of the territory he tramps for weeks at a time. Highly recommended for those who don't know the desert as well as for those who do.

The Secret Knowledge of Water: Discovering the Essence of The American Desert by Craig Childs is a must read for anyone who is stirred by the desert. Water is the defining mark of the desert and everything you look at testifies of its presence. In this book Childs takes us through all the various incarnations of water in these arid lands...the water that waits in pockets and tinajas; the water that moves in washes, streams, rivers and aquifers, and finally to the very heart of fierce water that tears and creates in torrents of violence - floods. Water is what we pray for and what we fear. He explores the ways of the Tohono O'odham, "Don't drink too much water" and recreates the routes of Father Kino tracking precious water in the Cabeza. From triops that suspend themselves - anhydrobiosis - life without water to the native fishes of desert streams struggling to survive in the face of habitat degradation, to the riparian habitats and barren plains - he covers it all, in an artistry of words that left me feeling reverent.

This book is written in the holy prose of a prophet, one who knows. Childs is a natural writer who has gone to the desert and become a part of it. He cracks the door and lets the land bear witness for itself. It is incredible writing, better than I have ever known.

Although I had planned to do so, I had not gotten around to reading this wonderful book until I had some time while I was waiting in an airport recently. I immediately understood the author's reverence for the waters of the desert because I grew up in southwestern Arizona and intimately know some of the places he mentions, as well as others that he does not. The water tanks of the area near and on the Camino del Diablo and the life-giving stream called Sycamore Canyon are well known to me and I am very familiar with tadpole shrimp and some of the other smaller organisms of the tinajas, playa lakes and puddles. Indeed, Craig Childs has caught the not so easy to define wonder that one feels when seeing water in the desert. "The Secret Knowledge of Water: Discovering the Essence of the American Desert" voices what many desert rats (as I was when I was younger) would have difficulty saying- that water in the desert is almost a holy entity, a substance that defies definition (despite our knowledge of the chemical structure) because it is manifestly the material of life.

As a scientist I can find fascination with the multitude of creatures that live in the springs, creeks, rivers and tinajas, but the awe goes much deeper than just collecting facts, necessary and interesting as they are. It is, as Childs has so eloquently described, a visceral feeling that one gets- a deep satisfaction - when one sees the surface of deep and cool pools of water in hidden rocky tanks (such as Tinajas Altas, which I have not seen, but have been close to, or another group he does not mention, Cinco Tinajas in Big Bend Ranch State Park, Texas, which I have seen), or of a stream flowing in a thin sheet over the bedrock of a desert canyon, as in Sycamore Canyon.

I have only one very minor bone to pick. He says his mother was born in the Sonoran Desert, but no part of that desert reaches the Texas-Mexico border. I think he means Sonoran Life Zone. But this is a minor quibble in a book that is a gem of writing about the natural world of the North American deserts.

Read this book if you would understand the reverence for water that is engendered by a life in the desert.

the secret knowledge of water is tempting, sensual, humbling and even frightning. having recently moved into the area which childs so reverently describes, i was moved by the passion and understanding in his writing. the desert is ruthless. that much is clear from living here and reading this book. however, the desert also holds amazing beauty and power; all fluidly shared by the author. i highly reccomend this read to anyone who has experienced water in any form. i guarantee you will come away with a new respect for mother nature.

What John McPhee did for North American geology in "Annals of the Former World", Craig Childs does for the deserts of the southwestern U.S. in "The Secret Knowledge of Water". Childs does it better, however: he writes as a son of the desert, one whose intimate knowledge and love of the land and its ways percolate up through these pages like the waters of a favorite desert spring. And he shares his admiration and respect for the desert in a lyric prose that delights as much as it informs.

Childs has worked as a guide and teacher in this area of the country. That he wrote a book based on his knowledge of the terrain is not all that surprising, but his ability to provide a guided tour on paper and to paint word pictures of desert scenes like a novelist would is extraordinary. The successive sections of the book stand on their own as introductions to the desert world and, particularly, to the nature and role of water in the desert. But they also peel away a layer at a time, revealing more and more fascinations as he leads through the book. So we are treated at the start to an account of what John Wesley Powell called the "Thousand Wells" area of the Arizona-Utah border, a collection of potholes, or "waterpockets", each containing hundreds (or thousands) of gallons of water and found sitting on the surface of the land in one of the least likely places on the planet for water to be. But from there we are treated to more delights: underground reservoirs that bubble up to the surface in springs or spout out from a rock face in a waterfall; arroyos that carve the desert into creeks and then disappear; canyons that channel even modest rainfall into floods that are as fierce as they are fickle. Childs' prose is full of wonder and an eye for detail; he can get new-agey at times, though, especially in how often and how strongly he personifies water, and the account he tells of child sacrifice to stop a flood can be either poignant or horrifying, depending on one's point of view. So the accounts hit some bumps here and there, but nothing hard enough to make the jeep he's taking us around in bend an axle.

I have been to, or near, some of the places Childs describes in Secret Knowledge and, as a lifelong resident of the well-watered east, naturally missed every single feature he wrote about. So next time I go, I will be sure to bring this book along to point the way to some of the hidden gems of the desert. It's like having the best tour guide ever lead you around personally, but on the cheap.

"The Secret Knowledge of Water" is prose poetry, without a single word wasted. Three or four months after reading it, many of the images are still in my head: images of ancient trails to waterholes; large, unexpected swimming holes, microbes so hardy their environment can go dry and they just curl up and wait...

This book will become even more valuable and compelling as drinking water supplies diminish in quality and quantity. Childs leads us with great flair to a subject of unparalleled importance. His musings blend with touches of humor, history and fascinating naturalism. "Secret Knowledge" should be on every nightstand and in every science (and literature) classroom. It's truly a work of art!

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, this book lures you out of your safety zone to follow Craig Childs' footprints across scrublands, along river beds & deep, deep into voice-filled canyons.

A word about Regan Choi's artwork: imagine it "life" sized - immense jutting bones of our planet towering above cactus & tumbleweed; 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. Delicate & mouth-watering!

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.