I recently returned from a holiday in Arizona, where my husband and I journeyed through the state from south to north on a spring break excursion with some wonderful souls we are fortunate to call friends. We landed in Phoenix at the edge of the Sonoran Desert, and after a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Taliesin,” headed through arid mountains shadowed by tales of lost fortunes and giant saguaro, toward the Martian landscape of Sedona. Cactus greens, vibrant sky blue and myriad shades of earth from white cliffs and red rocks filled my long-range view and bloomed behind my eyes. Not one day of rain in eight, and what a relief to feel the warmth of the sun after the clinging wet of our Atlanta winter! The scenery of the west must be so stimulating to me because it is so alien from my familiar haunts. Between my time in Atlanta and the mountains of North Carolina, I am nearly always enfolded within a maze of hillsides and surrounded by a curtain of greenery. To see emptiness for miles in any direction stimulates a sense of wonder. The mountainous terrain from Sedona to Flagstaff felt more familiar with its deep gorges, rushing rivers and the white thunder of falling water.
We were headed toward our main goal, the place we would sojourn the longest, Grand Canyon National Park. I had only ever seen this wonder of the world in passing; a brief stop made on the way home from a competition during high school chorus. Three of our six had seen it only courtesy of the National Geographic channel. It was certainly worth the trip. Not just the hazy bands of color that come into sharp focus at the rising and setting of the sun, or the abundant wildlife, its importance to Native Americans, or the history of its discovery, exploration and founding as a national treasure; or even the geological time machine that is the canyon from floor to rim. All of these make it special, but to me the most awe-inspiring and thought-provoking aspect of the Grand Canyon is the story of its formation. Not even Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration felt the need to bridge this chasm, which ranges from a quarter of a mile a to 18 miles across at its widest. It spans about 277 miles in length, and descends about a mile to its floor. Whether you choose to believe it was created over millions of years, or that it provides evidence of a sudden planetary deluge, the Grand Canyon is more than anything else a testament to the power of water. At the bottom of the canyon, the Colorado River continues to carve a path with an average width of 300 feet, though at its deepest point, 85 feet, it narrows to less than a third of its average width. This elemental force reduces mountains to flatlands, and fertile valleys to bedrock.
As a child of private school teachers, I spent a lot of time at school before and after hours when other kids were at home riding bikes through their neighborhoods. One of my favorite solitary pastimes was spent on my knees in the soft, sandy soil on the border of the playground. There I would dig long, winding trenches with my hands, raising up small islands and carving cliff dwellings into my canyon walls, damming up a “lake” at the end of it all, then opening up the water spigot and sending in the water to see what would stand, and what would fall.
Whether desert flash flood or tsunami wave, gathered upon itself, water easily inundates the pitiful strongholds of man, collapsing any notions we might have of control over the circumstances of nature. Water destroys and reforms. Too much and we are overwhelmed. Not enough, and we wither.
There are many allusions to water in scripture. While humans exercise only a little influence with our dams, storm drains and aqueducts, the waters are subject to One who divided them, made them stand in a heap, forced them from a rock to quench the thirsty, and even turned them to blood (from Psalm 78).
“The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee, they were afraid, the depths also were troubled. The clouds poured out water. Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known.”
Of the four classical elements, earth, wind, fire and water, it could be argued that while we harness, use, even need all of them, water is unique in its necessity to all living things. Where it flows freely, there is abundance. When it disappears, life languishes, as it did in another stop on our Arizona journey, the Petrified Forest.
On the edge of the Painted Desert, I contemplated this unusual landscape and wondered how a rainforest environment that once supported a multitude of trees, some nearly the size of the California Redwoods, had dwindled to this dry and empty place. Mighty sentinels that once spread their roots through the soil to receive sustenance have turned to beautiful, lifeless stone. The water was diverted, the rain no longer fell. The climate turned cold and arid in this place. This folly of a forest remains; a mirror of a hardened heart where nothing moves but the wind.
Water cannot help but flow, and it changes what is in its path. It takes away, but it gives. It lulls us as it falls from above and beats a rhythm against our shelters, calls to us as it dances across stones and over the precipice, and cautiously, we listen from somewhere deep inside. Now instead of being frightened by its power, we are soothed. It cools and cleanses and we are refreshed. It holds us up, carries us; we relax, and drift. We drink, and our thirst is satisfied.
