Albuquerque-based writer Nick O’Brien pens a short story on the ebbs and flows of water—and morale—in the Southwest.
As the car careens eastbound along I-40, I glance in the rearview. Clouds are forming some miles back, just beyond the Petroglyphs. The forecast, it seems, is holding. As I drive, I think of wildfire and heat, of the planet at the mercy of the cosmos. Of the painting, on my living room wall, of a figure with their back turned, facing a horizon and an enormous setting sun. Earlier, when the power went out, quieting the fridge and severing the internet connection, I looked up at that painting.
The forecast for Albuquerque today promises a necessary, if flawed, comfort. These days, rain is an ephemeral balm. It pushes from my mind the megadrought that weighs on me each time my faucet leaks or the smell of woodsmoke—a scent that, before the evacuation, I considered innocuous, even pleasant—wafts past my nostrils. When I watch it fall, I can suspend logic; I can conceive of the West as an embattled garden, one that a rainy day might pull, if just for a moment, back from the brink.
There’s a roster of U.S. Geological Survey web pages I keep open on my laptop. Each day, I refresh these pages for updates on the ecological functionality of the West. My findings dictate my mood. One says Colorado’s snowpack gained an inch or two, and I feel lighter. Another shows water level drops at Mead and Powell, and I deflate. I rush through my shower in ninety frantic seconds, my mind chasing away images of dead fish on dry land.
I was tallying updates in my notebook when the outage hit. Until it returns, my hunt for water turns local.
I park by the foothills. The low sun shines pink on the mountainside and glistens off the antennae up at Sandia Crest. I follow the trail past the tan houses until the tree-dotted slopes surround me. Until the car, when I look back, is barely visible.
Then I’m off the trail and bushwhacking due east toward the mountain, dodging cholla. The ground steepens. My calves feel the elevation gain. When I turn again, northern Albuquerque sprawls below, shadowy in the powerless dusk. The clouds approaching from the west are now hulking and gray. The sun shoots pink and purple rays through a distant rain that forms a column between the earth and clouds.
The wind blows in staccato bursts; the dampness in it awakens the thrilling smell of piñon. I walk and climb until I’m out of breath. Then I spot a flat, inviting rock. I sit and lean forward, staring at a prickly pear by my feet. I feel the first drop. Dark wet patches pepper the rocks. It picks up quickly, but I don’t move, even when it soaks through my jeans, even when it runs off my hair into my eyes. In this moment, I’m the cactus, soaking in the water, storing it.
Below, the city erupts in yellow light as the power comes back on. The sun touches the horizon, cleaving the union of earth and sky with a flat, searing beam. I stick out my tongue and let it feel the rain. This is the comfort I’ll get today. Tomorrow, that comfort will evaporate with the rain puddles. Until then, I’ll savor this respite—from refreshing web pages, from tallying results, from chasing water.
