The American Southwest has sure changed since I lived there between 1978-1994, working on the Kaibab National Forest near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
What hasn’t, you say?
Well, I’m not talking about some old houses coming down and modern new buildings going up, or unwelcome cultural changes. It’s way, way bigger and scarier than that.
Climate change is laying waste to the place. A prolonged drought that’s getting worse and worse every year is drying up the rivers, lakes, streams, creeks, reservoirs, and wells. It’s like Mother Nature is slowly cutting off the water. And without water, people wouldn’t last a summer in the Southwest. It’s just too sunbaked hot.
I mean, Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, and Albuquerque, all sit in the middle of a desert. As the celebrated historian Wallace Stegner pointed out many years ago, life gets real sketchy out there “Beyond the Hundredth Meridian” .
And as the water dries up the wildfires roll in, burning the forests and towns with an almost calculated chaos.
When Jimmy and I drove into Price, Utah in June, the mountains on the west side of town — IN THE TOWN — were on fire. Helicopters were dropping red, fire-retardant slurry on the flaming hillsides, and no one in town seemed to even notice. Just another hot, smoky day in paradise.
And the once, “pinch me I must be dreaming”, deep blue skies are but a fleeting memory, replaced by a murky haze that resembles the humid skies of the East.
So, welcome to the future, friends and neighbors. A future where the towns of the Southwest slowly but surely run out of life-sustaining water and the whole place goes up in flames.
Where will all the people go?