Dryland

A bright orange, black-speckled butterfly lands on a patch of freshly watered soil near our lavender plant. It repeatedly opens and gently closes its wings—and then I swear it does a little dance, turning in circles, alternating clockwise and counterclockwise. It has been so dry this early spring that I imagine the Lepidoptera is doing a happy dance, grateful for the moisture. I glance around the freshly watered garden, and all sorts of insects spontaneously appear. Pollinators hover over the lawn and alight, drinking from grass spears dripping in artificial dew this human created.

It is a familiar scene in the middle of summer, but I am not used to seeing this gathering of insect life at the end of March. It is usually still freezing at night and not unusual for us to experience some late-season snowstorms. But this year, it seems like someone stole central Oregon and moved it a few thousand miles south. I’m not complaining about the unseasonably nice weather, but I feel like I am on another weather planet. To make the experience even more surreal, I can hear the repetitive electronic music of the ice cream truck as it makes its rounds in our neighborhood.

I think about changing weather patterns, and an image of Chaco Canyon suddenly pops into my brain. The culture that lived in this part of what we now call New Mexico occupied the site from about 850 to 1250. One theory about the decline and eventual abandonment of the site refers to a drastic drying period, leading to crop failure and a lot of thirsty people. The inhabitants eventually moved to sites farther away, locations that hosted necessary rains. I wonder what will happen in our area—the water department doesn’t seem particularly concerned about water resources here in Bend.

Humans can be very short-sighted. No, I really mean humans can be very oblivious to the obvious. Finite resources cannot sustain continuous population growth, and this part of Oregon is one of the fastest-growing areas in the country. When I moved here, somewhere around 15,000 people called this place home. Now the estimate is over 106,000—and that is only for the city limits. Deschutes County is closer to 215,000 and growing.

This burgeoning population is located in a part of the world that only gets about 10-12 inches of annual rainfall. The past couple of years it has been closer to six inches. As of this writing, we have accumulated a staggering .68 of an inch of precipitation in three months at the wettest time of the year. I look at the parched butterfly in our garden. It is happy to suck a bit of moisture from the earth I watered. Maybe it will survive the drought, maybe not. Maybe we will survive our short-sightedness, maybe not.

In the meantime, it is important to do what we can to ease the suffering of those who are water-insecure. Perhaps we will share our dwindling resources and come to know each other again. We could look up from our devices, cease fighting wars over oil, surrender our negative separating thoughts, and embrace all living things as our family. We all need water—and compassion—to survive.