The Deserts Will Re-Bloom Someday Despite Us. For Now Head North, It's The New West.

The white “bathtub ring” of mineral deposits marks the decline of Lake Mead

My daughter and i often drove over Hoover Dam and Lake Mead on our winter road trips to escape the rain. Each time we commented that it seemed even lower than the last. Lake Mead which is able to store two years of the Colorado River’s historic annual flow currently holds only 9 months worth of that flow. Lake Mead hasn't been this low since it was being filled.

Satellites show groundwater supply at greater risk than previously thought. The bigger problem is that the drought-stricken Colorado River Basin has experienced rapid and significant groundwater depletion since late 2004 according to a new study by NASA and University of California, Irvine. Many experts agree that about 70 percent of the Colorado River Basin water supply goes toward irrigated agriculture. YIKES

Bigger yet is the reality that the Western states and surrounding deserts are all in the worst drought in 2,000 years and they are far from alone. There are wide swaths of moderate to severe drought stretching from Oregon to Texas, with problems impacting numerous states west of the Mississippi River. Even more frightening is that much of the rest of the world is dealing with water scarcity issues too.  In fact, North America is actually in better shape than much of Africa and Asia.

Decades after reading 'Cadillac Desert', and years after watching 'Last Call at the Oasis', after driving the desert southwest's blue roads as often as possible, after loving every mile, every cactus, every critter and realizing both what a lucky shit i am to have been born when and where i was and how all of it is into all kinds of catastrophic trouble because of the rogue primate's obscene abuse of everything it sees.

i may never drive the 'dark desert highways, cool wind in my hair' again but i know that, try as we might to destroy them, we can't. About one day after we're finally history a seed will sprout through the cracked asphalt somewhere, it'll grow nourished by the good soil we idiots paved over once upon a time and it's seed and it's seed will walk on the winds generation after generation. Others will too, the desert will re-bloom someday despite us.

If you live in the desert, it ain't gonna get better soon, my advice is to head north [it's the new west].

i loved our road trips though i'm sorry now a bit for the extravagance i see in them that i didn't then. i've learned and keep learning that all i can do is my best, as defined by the parameters of what i know and believe that day everyday. As i was lucky to be born when i was, i'm lucky to now live on a small piece of the Great Mother's bosom with abundant clean water, air and poor hard working neighbors. It perfectly fits with my beater to beamer real estate metric.