Water in the Desert

North of Wilcox Arizona we drove for fifteen miles through desert drier than a popcorn fart.  Here and there it looked like someone had made an attempt to drill for water, move it, store it, or somehow get it.  When we opened the back tailgate of the pickup truck the dust had just poured in the covered bed.

The adventurers were trying to find a hot spring on land owned by the Nature Conservancy.  As luck would have it the Nature Conservancy headwaters were closed.  Our best determination was that the hot springs was right at their headwaters, so we had no access to the spring we wanted badly to roast in.

As that part of the adventure languished we drove on down the road to hell and looked for a place to hike.  First we went up a stream past an old abandoned ranch house of some sort.  Remarkable the stream suddenly had a lot of water in it.  Amazed to find the flowing stream Kadizzled headed back down the stream to the truck.  The water in the stream came to an instant stop.   The stream turned into a bone dry bed of gravel.  The water simply disappeared in an amazing feat right into the ground.

We regrouped at the truck and headed down a trail into a canyon.   The Stream appeared full of water and running briskly.   This was a stream fed from some underground source that never goes dry.  Because there is always water a unique little fish has evolved here in the desert.   Of course the fish is a protected endangered species.   From a desert so dry it was having a hard time growing rocks to a lush valley full of vegetation was a dramatic transition.   This was the kind of area that enabled the ancient people to survive. 

The desert and how it deals with water is always amazing.  The power of water to transform things is never better illustrated than when magical water hits soil that looks as dead as the bones along the dry part of the creek.  After hiking down stream for three miles in search of another hot spring we gave up and returned.