A review by msgtdameron
The Secret Knowledge of Water by Craig Childs

adventurous inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.25

This is more a love poem to water rather than a book about water and the desert.  There is just enough science so it's a non-fiction work.  But Childs has a love affair with desert water; from rain filled rock bowls of water, to small seeps that drip at a drop a second to all day to fill a one quart water bottle, to small streams that come and go.  These small streams sometimes run all year this year and the next don't run at all.  Some run each day from dusk till dawn.  Some run every year but disappear after only a few mile or a few tens of meters.  Then Childs talks about floods and the desert.  Floods can and do kill each time the wash, arour, stream, or dry bed floods.  It is in the flood chapters that one see's how abusive Childs relationship with water is.  Until he talks of floods he seems a very conscientious and driven scientist.  He loves finding water and writing about his finds.  Going into the water and feeling it.  The different tastes of wild water.  Following streams to there heads and then climbing into the cave they spring from.  Following the oral histories of the native tribes about where and what each stream and it's spirits flow from and where they go.  All of this is described as a lover/poet rather than a scientist.  Then comes floods and we read and see that this relationship is really abusive.  The chapters on floods show a man almost being killed by two different floods but he says he will continue back to chase those flood waters.  (The second flood story is the Epilogue and the flood almost kills Childs again. )  Childs lives in an abusive relationship with his lover.  He will chase her across miles and miles of desert and when she gets to violent he stays and lives with her violence.  Just as an abused man or women stays with their abuser.  It's love and it can be romantic and very passionate, but if he is not careful she will kill him.  One day he will be a half second slow and end up as the victims of the Bright Angel flood that he writes about.  Great read.