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| The Secret Knowledge of Water : Discovering the Essence of the American Desert | 
| Author: Craig Childs
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.99
Buy New: $6.00
You Save: $8.99 (60%)
New (31) from $6.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 62404
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Back Bay Pbk. Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0316610690
Dewey Decimal Number: 553.70979
EAN: 9780316610698
ASIN: 0316610690
Publication Date: May 1, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New - Has remainder mark. Fast shipping from trusted wholesaler with many exclusive publisher contracts.
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| Customer Reviews:
 One of the best books i've read, period. August 2, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
gorgeous language and imagery. an amazing adventurer (but the adventures aren't really the point) and incredibly in tune with his foibles, strengths and desires. if i could follow in even 1/100th of his footsteps (literally and metaphorically)...
The Fundamental Life Source of the "Wasteland." March 4, 2006
11 out of 13 found this review helpful
Although I had planned to do so, I had not gotten around to reading this wonderful book until I had some time while I was waiting in an airport recently. I immediately understood the author's reverence for the waters of the desert because I grew up in southwestern Arizona and intimately know some of the places he mentions, as well as others that he does not. The water tanks of the area near and on the Camino del Diablo and the life-giving stream called Sycamore Canyon are well known to me and I am very familiar with tadpole shrimp and some of the other smaller organisms of the tinajas, playa lakes and puddles. Indeed, Craig Childs has caught the not so easy to define wonder that one feels when seeing water in the desert. "The Secret Knowledge of Water: Discovering the Essence of the American Desert" voices what many desert rats (as I was when I was younger) would have difficulty saying- that water in the desert is almost a holy entity, a substance that defies definition (despite our knowledge of the chemical structure) because it is manifestly the material of life.
As a scientist I can find fascination with the multitude of creatures that live in the springs, creeks, rivers and tinajas, but the awe goes much deeper than just collecting facts, necessary and interesting as they are. It is, as Childs has so eloquently described, a visceral feeling that one gets- a deep satisfaction - when one sees the surface of deep and cool pools of water in hidden rocky tanks (such as Tinajas Altas, which I have not seen, but have been close to, or another group he does not mention, Cinco Tinajas in Big Bend Ranch State Park, Texas, which I have seen), or of a stream flowing in a thin sheet over the bedrock of a desert canyon, as in Sycamore Canyon.
I have only one very minor bone to pick. He says his mother was born in the Sonoran Desert, but no part of that desert reaches the Texas-Mexico border. I think he means Sonoran Life Zone. But this is a minor quibble in a book that is a gem of writing about the natural world of the North American deserts.
Read this book if you would understand the reverence for water that is engendered by a life in the desert.
very good December 2, 2004
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I was surprised that I liked this book as it started out so slow. But stick with it. It's fascinating.
A water journey September 7, 2004
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
For two years in 1976 & 1977, I rode horseback from San Diego to Maine, zig-zagging over 7,000 miles while living outside for two years. I called this adventure a "Ride For Nature." I have also travelled into Africa's Sahara, Australia's Outback, and Israel's Negev Desert. As well, I am the author of "The Holy Order of Water."
To me, the best quote in Child's book is on page 55, "...that species in water holes, the ones that can't get up and fly away, do not move around very often. They become genetically isolated over thousands, and then millions, of years. In 1992, after nearly all of the temproary vernal pools of California were destroyed by human development, researchers went out to catalog those still intact. Of the sixty-seven species of crustaceans found in the remaining pools, thirty had never been documented anywhere on the planet. People had to suddenly set about inventing names. A quarter of these newly found species were each found in its own pool among the fifty-eight pools studied, meaning there is not much motion between one pool and the next. What was lost in the hundreds of destroyed pools is unknown."
Besides the above, I can fully appreciate Childs' writing about modes of desert walking; thinking, and dressing. In the desert, any expenditure of energy or exposure results in the loss of water and one's ability to surive. Therefore, one becomes more conscious and thoughtful of body movement and clothing, as well as toward the sun, night, and the surrounding environment.
Perhaps it is this heightened state of desert consciousness that has helped give birth to so many enlightened prophets.
I highly recommend this book to anyone thinking of hiking in the desert, as well as to those who wish to understand the importance of deserts in the adventure of life on Earth.
the true nature of the desert September 4, 2004
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Childs' book remains one of the very best works of nature writing about desert landscapes and their effects upon a sensitive and adventurous explorer. There are few works were the reader so conceptually understands and emotionally feels the value of water. I've recommended this book to many over the years when giving lectures across the country about water management and water ethics. And I quote Childs' book 6 times in my own recently published Deep Immersion: The Experience of Water (nominated for top environmental book of the year, 2003. The author's message about staying wet even in deserts is a great one. For as master hydrophile Thoreau wrote " That part of you that is wettest is fullest of life" (Quoted from Profitably Soaked: Thoreau's Engagment With Water, Green Frigate Books, 2003).
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Wildlife, nature and the Environment
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