Thirst

The Grand Canyon is so big that when we spent a little time exploring the rim, I felt as though I’d hardly seen any of it. It’s impossible to feel that I could ever “know” it. At the same time, the immensity stills something inside me, brings a new kind of perspective to my life. 

In the last week, we’ve seen reservoirs on the Gunnison River in Colorado that flow from the waters of the Colorado River. We watched trees and groundcover being swallowed up by wildfire in that same area, because the land is too dry. 

We spent time in Lake Powell in Page, Arizona, where the Colorado River is held back and regulated by an impressive feat of engineering, the Glen Canyon Dam, which ensures water to Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and California, among other states. My fellow travelers splashed and swam in the lovely cool water. The water levels have dropped a lot. The demand for water in the southwest increases.

We stopped for a night in Williams, Arizona, where the town has held onto its Route 66 mid-century glory days with tenacity, partly because it was the last town on the route to be bypassed by a major highway. Never mind that those glory days were preceded by a migration of people desperate to escape more sand and heat during the Dust Bowl.

We’ve driven through the Mojave Desert and Joshua Tree National Park, where the sun sears the land and the wind stirs up dust devils along the roads. The area around Joshua Tree really feels like a beach town in search of a coastline. Sand spills over onto the roads, the scrubby plants are reminiscent of beach grass. 

Every mile of these days has held infinite natural beauty, in very different ways.

While we drove through the Mojave Desert, I was playing my Day 6 playlist (even though it was actually Day 8). I might add here that my passengers don’t seem to be impressed by my ability to include a song appropriate to the location. For example, Chuck Berry’s version of “Route 66” as we drove on Route 66. Or Robert Plant’s “29 Palms” as we explored, you guessed it, the town 29 Palms. They did seem to understand the gravity of listening to U2’s Joshua Tree album, partly because one of my fellow travelers had actually been to the anniversary concert!

Anyway, my playlist landed on the song “River” by Leon Bridges, one of the most beautiful pop/gospel songs I know. The video shows people who are thirsting for love and righteousness, for cleansing and
grace, in a unique way. Here’s the start of the song:

Been traveling these wide roads for so long
My heart’s been far from you
Ten thousand miles gone

Oh, I wanna come near and give ya
Every part of me
But there's blood on my hands
And my lips are unclean

In my darkness I remember
Momma’s words reoccur to me
"Surrender to the good Lord
And he’ll wipe your slate clean"

Take me to your river
I wanna go.”

Amen, Mr. Bridges. We are looking for a river to be washed clean. To wash our lips clean. To quench our thirst.

We left behind a green and full-leafed early summer in Grand Rapids. So sometimes in Colorado and Arizona the thirst would sneak up on me. I’d suddenly realize that’s what I was feeling when I’d been oblivious to subtler signs along the way.

In the Mojave, just driving along the roads made me thirsty. I would notice that the outside temperature had risen again by the intensified heat of sunlight on my arm through the window, in spite of the fact that we had the air conditioning blasting so much that the girls in the back were huddling under their blankets. I would look at the dashboard and see that, yup, the temp had gone up another 2 or 3 degrees. It topped out at 105 in the early afternoon.

The dust, the sand, the wind—there’s just no ignoring thirst in these conditions. It is there, and it is intense.

Joshua Tree National Park

After a gorgeous evening exploring Joshua Tree National Park, and another hot and dusty morning driving across it, we visited the Salton Sea, a huge body of water created in the early 1900s when engineers tried to shunt water from the Colorado River into the desert in an attempt to irrigate and farm the land. The water broke through their planned canal and filled the desert with a massive body of water that became salinated by the salt underground. 

For a short time in the 50s and 60s the sea became a thriving resort town for the rich and glamorous. Water was fed into it for many years, and it has fed water to a lot of agriculture. But it has no way to drain, lots of agricultural pesticides have washed into the lake, and last year the fresh water was cut off due to growing need for water elsewhere. 

Remains of the marina at 

North Beach, Salton Sea

their migration pattern. Their old stops have been developed and are no longer available to them, so the bird population could suffer severely. Interestingly, the park ranger at Joshua Tree said that only real effect of the Salton Sea on the national park has been the number of waterfowl that are spotted in the park, in the middle of a desert! What will happen to those birds when the water becomes untenable? What will happen to the people of the Salton Sea area who cannot afford to move, to find new homes and lives?

We are all thirsty. Thirsty for life, for love, for the power to control our own lives and environments. Thirsty for God’s grace in ways we don’t always comprehend.

Maybe spiritual thirst is like that physical thirst. Living in the lush green of a spiritual spring, you don’t notice a need at all. Coasting through arid alpine splendor, you know in your head you should be drinking, but you don’t feel it yet, even when there are little fires popping up around you. Then you hit the spiritual desert, and all you want is that water. And it seems there is none to be found.

May we all find that living water and drink deeply from it.