There's nothing like being in the desert to make you appreciate water. You don't really begin to appreciate it properly until it's gone though.
On a hike that can be a potentially lethal faux pas. From the looks of things we're about to get to see what it looks like when that happens on a larger scale.
This article about the impending demise of the Great Salt Lake in Utah and the catastrophic consequences of that got me to thinking (and editing) today. To save the lake, water use will have to be cut 30 to 50 percent, in one of the fastest growing areas of the country.
Arizona and Nevada are in similar straits, with booming populations and a dwindling Colorado River. Judging by people's fondness for moving into floodplains this shouldn't be particularly surprising but it's still just as baffling.
Somebody had best start churning out stillsuits in a hurry. Not sure anything else will save'em at this point. I wonder if water rights have made it to the blockchain yet?
On a more serious note, how do you stop a slow motion train wreck like this from happening? People are gonna people, be blindly oblivious to the problem until it's way too late, then loudly demand that something be done.
All I know is there's going to be some fun new ghost towns to explore before too much longer.
Originally was going to edit photos from Antelope Island (now peninsula) in the Great Salt Lake but that was too depressing so I went a little further south, to the deserts around Moab, Utah.
Canyonlands and Arches National Parks are some amazing places but they are definitely not somewhere you want to run out of water in.
It doesn't take long there to get a sense that we exist at Mother Nature's sufferance. Get sloppy or just unlucky and that's it for you.
If somebody could figure out a way to bottle that and sell it we might be alright. Barring that, how do you get people to understand that without catastrophe beating them about the head with it?
This fine home was built in 1906 to replace a more primitive structure. I wonder what Phoenix and Las Vegas will look like in a hundred years?
What do you think about having nothing to drink? Where are you going to go when the water don't flow?
These pictures are amazing, though I can't find myself staying in a place where water isn't available.
Thank you! It is kind of hard to imagine living with that sort of scarcity, beyond a certain point there's nothing you can do but move.
Thanks for dropping by!
That's right. Thanks for sharing.
Excellent shots! These images really accentuate the dessication and beauty of the land.
Thank you! I'm something of a rain magnet, it actually rained a couple times while I was there so these are a bit greener than you'd normally see. The desiccation does give it a unique sort of beauty doesn't it?
It certainly does!
Helluva reel you put together here sir.
Thank ya sir! It's a helluva place, did y'all ever make it down to Moab when you were traveliving?
Negative. Not together.
I went there once as a kid. A day trip. I was young enough it didn't leave an impression. Been meaning to go back.
Coral Pink is another one. It's on the other side of the state. Been to that one? Utah has a lot of cool spots.
Haven't been there, hadn't heard of it actually. My time in Utah consisted of a night camping on Antelope Island and a week in Moab and its environs. I could spend a month in southern Utah and still not be done with it.
The perfect balance in this pictures is created by the blue and orange. You can even take a look for yourself. Orange is directly opposite to blue on a colour wheel, thus making them complementary colours which is used in art to catch one’s eye as it creates the strongest contrast. It is really amazing that you caught nature’s art in pictures beyond beauty. Really good work!
Mother Nature is one hell of an artist 😎 Thank you!
Amazing landscape and shots, thanks for sharing, well done!
Thank you! It's an amazing place, I think you'd have lots of fun shooting there :)
I won't feel good when I don't have anything to drink. I'm the type who drinks water every now and then.
I'll runaway from wherever I am to where there is water.
Ha, me too. Usually when my head starts hurting to remind me of how long its been...
Some years and a decade ago, I was elk hunting with a local farmer. He was a devoutly religious, incessantly cheerful, and brutally hard-working man, like many farmers I've met. He soon established a pattern of stopping to drink at every creek, and I eventually asked him if there was a reason he did. I had also been raised where it rained constantly, where the slightest rise in elevation created a drop in elevation nearby that filled or dripped or ran with water, a place where you almost give up on rubber boots to keep your feet dry because it's almost impossible to not have to step in over your boots daily. Little creeks a foot wide trickled off every hill, and all of them flowed clear and sweet.
I never thought twice about drinking straight from creeks. Rivers and standing water were different. The rivers were always full of decaying fish, from salmon runs almost year round. I don't think salmon would drink that water. Standing water... it just never occurred to me to drink from a muskeg pool, or one of the little pocket lakes. There was always a clear, sweet creek within 100 yards. I was never once thirsty enough to think of drinking from any other, questionable, source.
My hunting buddy worked just as hard at hunting elk as he did at everything else. Being a lazy, fat construction worker, I had a tough time keeping up, and secretly rejoiced at the little breaks he gave me when he stopped to drink. He was tall and wiry, with longer legs than I, and set a quicker pace. He had a knack for it. He also had been raised on the land he farmed, and had roamed the mountainside we were on since he could walk. He could tell by smell when there were bulls in the herd, so I was willing to go to almost any length to hunt with him.
I wondered if it was a religious thing, if he knelt to give thanks for the sweet water at every opportunity, as we should. I wondered if it was a habit, a practice started in early youth busting through brush so thick it was sometimes actually practical to walk over a thicket, instead of through it. When we were discussing sighting in our rifles, once, he mentioned he reckoned the average distance at which he took elk was 5 yards. From the kind of country elk took to when under hunting pressure, in the company of such men, so determined to create that pressure, it became apparent to me that it really didn't matter what range we sighted our rifles at.
But, he quirked an eyebrow at me, the gears all whirring and reckoning my considerations, and said "I'm thirsty."
🤣🤣🤣
Best reason I've heard all day. Nowadays that'll just get you a run in with giardia I'm afraid. Used to do much the same when I was out hunting squirrel in the hills and hollers of southeastern Kentucky but I don't know how enthusiastic I would be about it today.
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These are amazing shots, thanks for sharing.