Water, water, everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water everywhere,

Nor any a drop to drink.

- Samuel Coleridge, “The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner”

A desert is a land devoid of water, a baked and desiccated condition forced upon the landscape by circumstances of topography.   Precious moisture, even if it is abundant “up-weather” is either deflected or squeezed out of the atmosphere long before it arrives, leaving the land in a perpetual state of drought.  It is therefore an enormous shock to look down upon the desert from 30,000 feet and see nothing but an apparent torrent of moving water. 

Dew drop by morning dew drop, spring storm by spring storm, gully washer by gully washer, water moves through this land, dragging ragged sediments with it.  Water is only an occasional visitor, but it makes the most out of every visit.

Ridges of resistant rock, constantly exposed to the elements, break off on their sharp edges and drop talus piles of debris onto the steep flanks below.  Rock fragments slowly decay, grain by grain, creating sand and gravel which flushes from the spaces leaving great fans, deltas and outwash plains in their wake.  Upended beds poke up through the sea of outwash like islands.

These fans and outwash plains are in constant combat.  They collide, they overlap, they push and slosh each other back and forth across the valley.  They interfinger like cards being shuffled, they cannibalize, and then rebuild. But always they are reinforced with new material from above, up-gradient, forced ever downward and outward by gravity, wind and water. 

The forces of erosion form a braided anastomosing system that transports finer and finer material, farther and farther away until the dust that is left blows into eddies and backwashes and crevices, forming dunes and sand flats.

The landscape splashes ever downward and outward, flattening and filling, spilling out into the lowest areas where remnants of rivers continue to move sluggishly - depositing and sorting.  And when the rivers can no longer move, they collapse into dry pans – playas - low lands of no escape where the remaining moisture evaporates and the dissolved minerals of millennia accumulate, leaving tiny crystals of salts to rip the suns rays and drive the world blind.    

To the eye it is an ever-lightening pallet as the sediments move down gradient.  Jet black volcanic hills yield to dark gray talus, while light brown valleys and pale pink sands give way to white salt flats and playas.  It is as if the desert landscape, like a head of long, luxurious hair, gives a great shake and lets the hair fall in an intricate mat of curls and snaggles.  It is chaotic and it is beautiful.

Out the window of the jet, the desert is still and dry, baking in the relentless sun.  There is not a drop of moisture in sight, save for a river just passing through.  Yet down below an action movie is in progress, a great boisterous cartoon swirls and eddies, bubbles and gurgles, washing down in waves.  Dew drop by morning dew drop, spring rain storm by spring rain storm, gully washer by gully washer.   Ghostly, clandestine, unseen waters carry load after load after load.

There is so much to be done. 

 "Don't get yer hopes up boys,

Them storms never make it o'r the mountains."

- Mr. Sir, "Holes"