Mythical River: Encounters with Water in the American Southwest Melissa Lynn Sevigny Iowa State University
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Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Graduate Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 2013 Mythical River: Encounters with Water in the American Southwest Melissa Lynn Sevigny Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd Part of the Climate Commons, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment Commons, and the Water Resource Management Commons Recommended Citation Sevigny, Melissa Lynn, "Mythical River: Encounters with Water in the American Southwest" (2013). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 13172. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd/13172 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Mythical river Encounters with water in the American Southwest by Melissa L. Sevigny A thesis submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS Major: Creative Writing and Environment Program of Study Committee: Debra Marquart, Major Professor Rick Bass Michael Dahlstrom Stephen Pett Richard Schultz Matthew Wynn Sivils Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 2013 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................. iii PROLOGUE. THE GOOD-LUCK RIVER ........................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1. A RIVER’S HEARTBEAT .......................................................... 12 CHAPTER 2. THE RIVER I DRINK .................................................................. 45 CHAPTER 3. THE COMPANY WE KEEP ....................................................... 72 CHAPTER 4. THE THIRSTY TREE .................................................................. 98 CHAPTER 5. SHALLOW ROOTS ................................................................... 122 CHAPTER 6. FOSSIL CREEK ......................................................................... 143 CHAPTER 7. THE GHOST DAM .................................................................... 163 CHAPTER 8. THE RIGHTS OF RIVERS ........................................................ 171 CODA ................................................................................................................ 195 AUTHOR’S NOTE ............................................................................................ 196 RECCOMENDED READING .......................................................................... 197 NOTES ............................................................................................................... 199 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Writing a book demands the help and support of many people. Foremost, my parents had the wisdom and foresight to encourage me equally in science and writing, and my sisters accompanied me on many adventures despite the danger of becoming characters in a book. My husband, Chris, also made this book possible for his patience in spending many evenings and weekends finding other things to do while I wrote, and occasionally forcing me to do other things as well. For invaluable comments on drafts, I thank Steve Pett, Matthew Wynn Sivils, Dick Schultz, Michael Dahlstrom, Rick Bass, John Linstrom, Megan White, and my advisor Deb Marquart, who taught me to listen for a book’s music. I owe the existence of this book to Madeline Kiser, my fellow water buffalo, who introduced me to water in my freshman year of college and has relentlessly pursued the subject in many conversations ever since. Her family deserves my thanks for putting up with our obsession: Oscar, Gabo, Joshua and Nelo the dog. I have been blessed with the opportunities to meet many water experts over the years, particularly Dr. Jackie King, who interested me in the science of natural flow regimes. I am grateful for the chance to exchange comments and thoughts with Charles Fishman, who wrote, “There’s no way of producing a book about water that is exhaustive without also producing a book that’s exhausting.” I am equally grateful for Sandra Steingraber’s kind encouragement to pursue science writing. Other inspirational teachers, both within and outside the classroom, include Michael Drake, Melanie Lenart, Robert Strom, Estella Schlager, Tom Wilson, Jim Riley, Ed Glenn and Lisa Schulte Moore. iv Sharon Megdal, Susanna Eden and the staff of the Water Resources Research Center have been an invaluable resource in guiding my development as a science writer and giving me a foot in the door of the bizarre world of western water politics. Joe Gelt, longtime editor of the Arizona Water Resource, first introduced me to the Buenaventura River. Laura Miller, Jeri Neal and the staff at the Leopold Center offered much- appreciated support and lively conversation in my final two years of graduate school. Dick and Lois Shelton deserve special mention for making writing a part of my life since a very young age, and for laughing at the limericks I wrote in elementary school. Several other writers and editors have encouraged and supported my work over the years, including Alison Hawthorne Deming, Stellasue Lee, Mark Kimble, Lori Stiles and Simmons Buntin. The chapter “The Thirsty Tree” first appeared in Buntin’s excellent online magazine Terrain.org. I thank the Arizona Daily Star, Sky Island Alliance, Tucson Audubon Society, UANews.org, Southwest Climate Change Alliance and CLIMAS for occasionally finding room for my science columns, and especially the brave staff of the Tucson Citizen, who briefly counted me among them in the paper’s final months and weathered the downturn of print journalism with tenacity and grace. Many scientists, policy experts and residents of western states agreed to interviews in the course of my research. Their contribution is indicated in the notes at the end of the book; any errors are my own. Jeff Ellens’ cheerful encouragement helped me finish, and remember that I have a life to live beyond these pages. Finally, I owe thanks to the owners of local coffee shops everywhere, especially Lorry: I am convinced no books would ever be completed without you. v To speak it clearly, how the water goes is how the earth is shaped. —Jim Harrison, The Theory and Practice of Rivers Water flows uphill toward power and money. —anonymous western saying 1 PROLOGUE. THE GOOD-LUCK RIVER Imagine a country so dry even the barrel cacti sport sunburns. An embarrassed blush overspreads each ridge of spongy flesh, barbed with fishhook spines. The sun melts into ribbons of pink and gold above black volcanic hills, and the sky deepens to indigo, but hours will pass before the naked earth gives up the heat it hoarded during the day. Sunlight pools and lingers in the valley long after the eastern faces of the mountains have dimmed, and city lights begin to gleam, brighter and closer than the stars just now swimming out of the dark. When I think of Tucson, I always imagine it from above—the square window of a plane just above the runway, or a curve on the road through Gates Pass. The city ebbs and flows in the crepuscular light, lapping against the Catalinas, Rincons and Tucson foothills. The desert, like the ocean, has its tides: stone and soil surrendered to the slow pull of gravity. I lived here long enough to feel those tides like a second heartbeat. The solid ground rises up in a wave to settle somewhere inside my body, carrying its living map of blue-veined washes and caliche bones. The desert begins with water, and water began in space. Water’s birth takes place tucked within folds of interstellar clouds, dense with gas and dust by the universe’s vast standards. Like any birth, it begins with a marriage, or at least a mating: H bound to O, HO bound to H, slammed together by the shockwaves of collapsing stars. The miracle, and mystery, is how this water appeared on Earth not long after the planet coalesced from cosmic grains of dust at temperatures hot enough to melt lead. Some scientists think water was present from the start, as molecules so tightly bound to 2 dust particles they withstood the molten heat. Others theorize that water streamed down from the sky in the fiery bellies of protoplanets. A few million years into the solar system’s turbulent formation, Jupiter swung out of its usual course, plowed inward through the asteroid belt and slingshotted out again. The migration sent hundreds of thousands of icy objects skipping out of their orbits like sandpipers scattering before a breaking wave. Water makes up very little of our planet’s mass: Only a vital few needed to rain down on Earth.1 In either case—long-distance delivery or local creation—the water that formed at Earth’s beginning is exactly the same amount of water that exists today. We cannot easily destroy water, but we also can’t make any more.2 A strange confluence of events brought Earth to the precise place and time that gave it waterfalls, oceans, mist and monsoon storms. That convergence may be rare or common across the cosmos: nobody knows. I call it blind chance, pure grace, a miracle. Humans have an inborn affinity for water. An inward ocean shapes our cells and bends the double strands of our DNA. Polarity gives definition to the shape of a water molecule, a faint positive charge hovering around the offset hydrogen atoms, a faint negative charge on the opposite side. This gives water strange qualities—an iceberg’s