Essays

Wild On The Prairie: Drought

Experiencing the drought -- guided imagery
May 28, 2000

The drought is becoming an ecological catastrophe. City dwellers with automatic water systems and air conditioning have not suffered. Our culture has insulated us from knowing within our marrow the horror occurring in almost every pasture within 50 miles. There is no grass left in most pastures. Most ranchers have sold off most of their livestock. There is no soil moisture for a farmer to utilize. They feel the relentless pressure of the drought, but not the rest of us.

We all should take a short drive along one of the county roads one afternoon with the temperature over 100 degrees and the wind blowing over 20 miles an hour. We should stop and walk away from the vehicle and plunk ourselves down on a lawn chair. Most of us could not even last 10 minutes. We are very spoiled, for discomfort comes easy, and few of us endure discomfort well. I challenge everyone to spend one hour enduring the conditions that are normal for this drought.

As we sit in that hypothetical chair, and while the sweat drips, and tender flesh reddens even through sunscreen, think about where we get our water. We get most of it from Lake Ivey. Lake Ivey is below half full, having dropped 25 percent of its capacity in one year. With another year of drought the dissolved solids will convince most of us to drink bottled water, and will cause damage to plantings of inappropriate landscape plants. Yes, there is some groundwater, but it is finite. We can continue to use water as we do now for a number of years.

Our political leaders tell us that there is no need to worry about the water supply. Elected officials pride themselves on being conservatives. However, Midland is a rich town, so we can buy water. We do not have to conserve water, we are told.

We do waste water. Everybody has seen that some water goes down the streets because of an untended sprinkler system. A number of people comment about schools and parks being watered in the heat of the day.

When you see the water in the duck pond at Wadley-Barron Park, you are seeing water that originally was used as landscape irrigation. Excess water in the home landscape percolates down to the first impervious layer of rock, and then travels down its subterranean slopes, emerging in the old playa of the park as a spring.

The duck pond at Wadley Barron Park is a blatant statement by the citizens of Midland that we do not care to conserve water. Most automatic irrigation systems are set to put down anywhere from 60 to 140 inches of water a year. There are few places anywhere in the United States that has that much rainfall. Hydrologists know that the water table that supplies the park as a “perched water table,” far above the Oglalla Aquifer.

The Oglalla Aquifer is the source of our ground water. Its source was the Rocky Mountains, before the Pecos River began running and separated the aquifer from its source. The water in the aquifer is finite. No amount of rainfall will fill it up, ever.

You are sitting in that chair, and the sweat is making your skin crawl. You reach for that nice cold soda pop, but there is none to be had. This is a simple test of endurance, remember? Up high in the sky a vulture is circling, sensing you might not last long! There is nothing else in the sky, no clouds anywhere. In the rainy 1980s we often had 50 to 60 days with some precipitation. The last two years each had less than 25 days during which at least a slight mist fell.

Nowadays, when thunderheads do build up, strong gusts of wind, some lightning, and maybe a brief shower occur and then the clouds race away, or dissipate. When a thunderhead does build up, a country person goes outside. A farmer or a rancher needs the rain for the viability of his or her business. He/she sniffs the sweet softness of the humidity and lifts eyes to the heavens. “Rain! Rain! Please come! Even if there must be hail and tornadoes! Please rain!” Even when lightning strikes within a mile or two, the country person stays out, watching and praying, trying to guide the moisture to where it is needed. “It won’t rain unless I stay outside!”

Let’s have a good steady 25 mph wind blow as we sit in the chair. The skin begins to become taut with surface dehydration. Dust lands in the folds of the skin on the inside of the elbow and causes more minor irritation. A tiny piece of dried vegetation flies into an eye and feels like a log.

Think about the adaptations of grassland plants and animals. Most grassland plants are not tall. If a species is tall it has a suckering habitat so each copse forms a dome. When a mesquite germinates the first stem stays flat on the ground and only after several stems are covered with blow sand a half dozen upright stems finally begin to grow. Meadowlarks spend most of their time on the ground, only flying to avoid predators. Cassin’s Sparrows only fly to advertise for a mate. Grasshopper Sparrows only flit a few feet to dive into the grass.

It would be smart to lie down and get out of the wind, wouldn’t it? But if you do sprawl on the ground, the soil temperature is at least 150 degrees F. You can feel your toes beginning to bake in your shoes. You are totally terribly miserable, aren’t you? Only ten minutes have passed.

You are participating (as you read) in a pedagogical technique known as guided imagery. The imagination is very powerful, even if it has been atrophied by the heroin-numbness of television. If you were truly out in the pasture, miles from any house, no car in sight, and no chair to sit in, by now you might be panicking, breathing quickly and shallowly, your pulse rate elevated until a pounding in your ears deafens you. Every year in the American Southwest people die of heatstroke and dehydration because they disrespect the realities of the natural world.

There is a parallel between those that die of dehydration in the Southwest and how our society wastes water. Our modern culture despises the realities of the natural world. Our material infrastructure coddles us in to believing in an illusion of endless water and endless air conditioning. We are aliens upon this land (importing all of our food, water, and even energy), living in enclosed “space stations” that are cocoons protecting a soft gooshy smushy interior, for we are like hairy little caterpillars gobbling and gobbling up limited natural resources. Our copious trash piles are the frass of our culture.

If the drought persists even 10 more years Midland may be a ghost town. In the 1200s a drought of 25 years occurred, so it is possible. If we continue to pretend we can liberally waste our water and believe we can always buy more, the real world will eventually put an end to our callow puerile self-centeredness.

We can do better. We must. A first step may seem radical. WATER OUTSIDE ONLY ONCE EVERY TWO WEEKS. Conservative towns have water conservation plans that they have implemented. Does our liberal town?