‘The Desert Empire’ is a long essay Sibley wrote for Harper’s magazine in 1977, a drought year throughout the American West, and one of the five driest years in the recorded history of Colorado River flows. It is part celebration of the accomplishments that enabled the Colorado River Basin to survive that year on close to a ‘business as usual’ status, part a reflection on the history that led to those achievements, and part a rumination on how more of the same in a heavy growth environment could undermine the whole river enterprise.
In its desperate search for water, the American West meets the limits of the technological ideal.
~ George Sibley
Anyone interested, for whatever reason, in the :study of water in ‘the West will in the end concen-trate on the Colbrado, wildest of rivers, foaming, raging, rushing southward-erratic, headlong, in-congruous in the desert.
~ John McPhee · Encounters with the Archdruid
“THIS IS A STORY about a river, but it is also about the desert. I should begin by admitting that I am no lover of the desert. I find a certain fascination in its strange, disturbing beau-ty; but I am ultimately repelled by the heat, by the dead stillness when it’s still and the spinning dust sentinels when it’s not, but most of all by the dryness…. ”
To read the essay, click here.
Recent Posts
- Romancing the River: The Real ‘Two Basins’ of a Desert River
This will be my last post before what might be our last election – if our would-be tyrant doesn’t succeed in stopping it entirely. I encourage my handful of readers to vote early, and then be prepared to participate in public opposition – make a big noise – to the chaos our PINO will surely ... Read More - Romancing the River – Moving toward Bankruptcy Management
In the last post here, I argued that, water-wise, the Colorado River region is no longer in a ‘water crisis’ – a term implying a situation where some changes and adjustments need to be made ‘to get back to normal.’ No. We will never get back to the 20th century Colorado River ‘normal’ – the ... Read More - Romancing the River: Bankruptcy in the Slough of Despond
You may remember my mention in early February of a research paper from scientists at the United Nation University Institute of Water, Environment and Health, titled Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era. The report begins: ‘Amid chronic groundwater depletion, water overallocation, land and soil degradation, deforestation, and pollution, all ... Read More - Romancing the River: Let us gather by the river….
Every so often it just seems like a good idea to drop out of the wrangling over the future of water in the arid west and – just go down to the river itself. A good friend abetted this by taking me along on a float down the lower Gorge of the Gunnison River. My ... Read More