A personal essay about the relationship between water and a young girl

My life starts where the Colorado river begins. At its headwaters, I grew up among meadows of wildflowers and crystal clear water. I grew tall with the trees that sprouted each spring in my yard. My neighborhood was home to many families; by families I mean the families of elk, eagles, deer, and bears. I made finger paintings of butterflies and odd looking mushrooms I found in the woods. As I grew up and began to travel more, I became greatly interested in what was downstream. At age 7, I was told that downstream makes up about 1,450 miles. That number meant nothing to me as a child and still is unfathomable to this day. The vastness of distance came into view when I started exploring the West with my own eyes. I was conflicted by the popular view that the river was simply just a resource for water to many cities and the people within them. To me, the river will always be another living thing among me and my family. 

It is a long process to get to know a river; you can’t just take it out to dinner and ask about its life story exactly. It takes patience, curiosity, and persistence but more so some good sunscreen, hiking shoes, and a few boring summer breaks. Through my problem solving and pesky question asking as a kid,  I found out that the river doesn’t look how it’s supposed to when you get further downstream. It’s dried up and doesn’t run into the gulf like it once did. And I was on a trek to figure out why. Any map will show you that seven states rely on this river: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, California, and Nevada. Man made aqueducts and dams bring the water to places hundreds of miles away from the river. The All-American Canal is an 80 mile long aqueduct bringing water to the Imperial Valley of southern California and is the only water supply for the Imperial Irrigation District. Without water rights to the Colorado River, this productive agricultural region would turn back to a barren desert, affecting the food supply for all of California. The river has many more “stories” than I assumed and it affects more places than I could possibly ever travel to by myself. Some effects I have seen with my own eyes are from two of the rivers largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Here I was able to see the reality of what was wrong. I have visited these lakes yearly and each time it’s been lower than the trip before. Memory of a full and replenished lake leaves behind “bathtub rings” hundreds of feet above where water currently sits. Water tells a story. And this story is of what once was. 

The Colorado River water crisis should be a state of emergency. Water is necessary for all life. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that we are running water dry. According to the 2022 study in the journal nature climate change, the southwest is experiencing its driest period since year 800. That’s a whopping 1,200 years. The journal takes into account the last 22 years, concluding that less soil moisture and runoff are only the beginning warning signs. Areas that were once abundantly green and thriving are now having droughts and are more susceptible to wildfires. Hot and dry winds in 2020 started the Grizzly Creek fire in the Colorado Glenwood Canyon, evacuating my family and many others. This area is known for cool temperatures, river recreation, and skiing however that did not stop the fire from burning over 32,000 acres. The main highway running through Colorado, I-70, was closed for two weeks, the longest closure in its history. I heard many people say “It just happened to be a particularly dry month.” I never quite thought that way. The area needed more water and it was used to more water. Once there is a lack of water in the soil and brush, fighting the fire becomes much more difficult. The fire lasted four months. We didn’t need more water, more water needed to be left alone. I encourage you to think like two environmentalist writers, Figueres and Rivett-Carnac, who propose that we should “read each scenario not as a prediction of the future but as a warning of what may come and what we still have a chance to change.” Wildfire risk will be a prevalent future event unless we change our water usage habits. Like the title of their book entails, it’s all about The Future We Choose. 

Everyone can build new habits but it is what we do collectively that produces change. This idea has been sparked in a few cities down farther along the river, one particularly being Las Vegas, Nevada. I visited family there often as a child and was always shocked that this huge metropolis was located in the middle of the desert. And it all comes back to the Colorado River water, specifically Lake Mead that makes living there even remotely possible. Nearly everyone has adapted to a friendly water usage lifestyle. They have seasonal water restrictions and schedules that limit landscape irrigation, homeowners replace grassy lawns with water efficient landscaping and drought-tolerant plants, and water waste is encouraged to be reported, corrected, and reused or returned to the Colorado River. After asking my family who lives there about how big of a change this must have been, I was surprised to find that it was no big task to give up some water here or there. They didn’t even realize how much was being wasted. The funny thing seems to be that nobody is complaining about how their life is now. Landscaping is more self-sufficient than ever, saving time and money for homeowners but also keeping water in the river where it belongs. Water efficiency throughout a whole city is the type of big collective action we need. We must all free our minds from its wasteful habits because The Future We Choose is right again: “Thinking outside established patterns is a radical act for preserving our collective freedom.” Our water sources have never been endless, it’s just the fact that we are only becoming affected by it now.

“It is a long process to get to know a river; you can’t just take it out to dinner and ask about its life story exactly.”

Humans are short term problem solvers; when it comes to a long term problem, we rarely act unless we’re currently being affected. Why is this? It goes back to animal instinct to detect present danger. In an op-Ed in the Las Angeles times, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert emphasized global warming as a threat to humans largely because it does not trip our brains alarm even when our world may be burning around us. Issues like climate change and the water crisis do not cause the same reactions as threats like terrorism. In order to shift our mindset, we must humanize the water crisis and make it a morally reprehensible action. Megadroughts should be described with he/she/it pronouns as if some thing is really attacking our water supply. Get to know your river or local water sources as if you really are taking it out to dinner and asking about its life story. Users of this natural source must also maintain their water ethics. If we continue to be bystanders to the water crisis, not only will physical droughts pursue, but moral droughts as well. Water stewardship is built on ethics and it is time we all reflect on what we’ve been doing or not doing to fulfill these moral obligations. I, for one, refuse to believe in a reality where the end of my life coincides with the end of the Colorado River.