desert water

DESERT WATER
Biguns, bless his pea picken heart, is always ready to throw me a softball for an article idea. Just a general rambling about where to live in the desert in relation to water. Now, I could have gone off about economics. Like, half the states are borrowing money to pay unemployment benefits. Or global trade has declined 15% last year, compared to 5% after 9/11 or 11% in the 70’s. Or how the FDIC fund is broke and at a negative eight billion for last quarter. Or, I could have wished everyone a Happy Pearl Harbor Day, where we should all take a moment out of our day and curse the black evil twisted heart of FDR for all eternity in the lowest depths of Hell for condemning the military members at the site to a watery grave so that his banker buddies could make even more money by trading away our stockpile of oil and metal ores to get us out of a Depression they started and stimulate the economy with a global war. It wasn’t in the nations ( but the bankers ) interest to have a war. The Nazi’s and Communists would have wore each other out, the British would have lost the Commonwealth and we could have peacefully taken over the whole place. Unless of course, we actually stole the nuclear bomb from the Germans and had to wage a conventional fight to get to it first. Why else would it make sense to fly over hundreds of sorties from Germany with their fissionable material? Perhaps they weren’t as far behind in their bomb as our propaganda suggests. That would be an interesting concept to research. But for now, back to something vaguely resembling survivalism.
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I’ve always loved the desert. I like trees and mountains, but the desert seems natural. Perhaps because I grew up in southern California and its all one big desert with a few pipes from the Sierra’s keeping everyone alive. I think I would have preferred the low desert where keeping cool is the regular problem rather than up in the high desert where nine months out of the year your nipples are rock hard from the cold. Alas, every crippled up old fart is either playing golf courses every three blocks or trying not to have a coronary in Wal-Mart all over Florida and the southwest. The low desert is a very crowded place. And that is a recipe for disaster eventually. Already Phoenix is sinking each year due to the water table being sucked down to water said golf courses or wash the Cadillac’s needed to get to said Wal-Marts. In a few years the millions of people there not being sniped at in the re-conquest of Old Mexico are going to be dying of thirst as the petroleum runs out to pump the water. The high desert, with the exception of the edges of the Great Basin ( Reno, Salt Lake ) is a pretty empty place. There may not be water everywhere, but there are plenty of places that are close to a river but have no population ( there are other good places with water but no population such as near the Pecos in west Texas, but I’m sticking close to home right now ).
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Do not buy any desert property that is not close to running water. Do not rely on a well unless you have a backup source in naturally occurring water. It might not have to be in walking distance, if you have the means to pick up and move closer to the water come the collapse. But it probably is a good idea. You can also do the roof collection of rain deal. If you discipline yourself to three gallons of water a day you won’t need much roof or storage capacity. But I prefer to do my water collection at the city park, with the river as a backup. The Humboldt River is hundreds of miles long and it only passes by a few small cities. And I am only one mile away from it at my present location. Worse comes to worse, I can walk a few gallons back in a pack every day. Before you buy junk desert land, look at the atlas for a nearby river.
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You could worry about whether the west is in a long term drought and if the snow pack won’t be disappearing soon. I don’t, not because it can’t happen but because I can stay mobile. No, I can’t cart hundreds of pounds of wheat to a lusher area after Gore Warning dries us out. By that time I’m sure I’ll already have eaten it all anyway. Plus used up most of my ammo. If I’m still alive. The desert isn’t that tough of a place. You just need to live close to a natural water source and forget about a well. You also need to forget about gardening. Conserving isn’t impossible, you just need to adjust to not being so special you need a golf course in Palm Springs.
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