Water in the Desert

“Water in the Desert is a generous invitation to follow the many streams that flow into the river of Gary Paul Nabhan’s remarkable life and work. Drawing on family, teachers, cultures, and the teachings of diverse biocultural landscapes, he brings science to the service of land and culture, showing us what it looks like to reciprocate the gifts of nature with gifts of head, hands, and heart.”

“Water in the Desert is the enthralling story of a world-class ethnobotanist and agrarian visionary.”

“Set against the upheavals of the late 1960s, this fascinating account follows a young man whose political awakening, illness, and retreat into wild places become acts of survival. Gary Paul Nabhan beautifully recounts a story of moral courage as well as the transformative power of the natural world. Readers will be captivated by Water in the Desert, its meaning, resistance, and wonder resonating long after the last page.”

“Gary Paul Nabhan is a human pollinator, cross-fertilizing and enlivening all the touches. With this remarkable and inspiring book, that work will continue far into the future.”

“Water in the Desert is a naturalist’s trance, an inspiring and compelling parable about healing and repair in a time of destruction. With his deep empathy for people, commitment to a life’s work, and scientific rigor, Gary Paul Nabhan has the eye of a naturalist and the voice of a prophet. Brother, father, and defender, Nabhan not only has taught us what the desert smells like, but models for us a deep respect for the cultures that arose from that land and for the wisdom of their relationships with other species. Water in the Desert reminds us that the world sang us all into being and offers us vivid dreams of sentient beings and ancestors, ecotones and song maps, stories of caretaking and Ojos de Aguas, racism and Martin Luther King’s assassination and, finally, seeing the world whole. Nabhan is a translator between worlds, an edge walker who prefers solitude but knows animals as kin, and helps us to see and to smell and to love. Water in the Desert shows that life was always waiting for Nabhan, and for all of us.”

“Soul-nourishing, wildly informative, crucially redemptive, and not to be missed!”

“Gary Paul Nabhan’s extraordinary empathy for the Earth shines through in this luminous, enlightening, and compelling book. As a toddler taking in the songs and scents of the world around him, he exemplified a child’s bonding with Nature. As a youth he explored the sand dunes and deep waters of Lake Michigan, their flora and fauna; he took part in launching the first Earth Day, became a scientist, an activist, a champion of local food. From the deserts of the Southwest and the Sahara to the Sea of Cortes, the Pacific Ocean, and the Mediterranean, his deep involvement with Indigenous peoples and their sacred sites is exemplary. Nabhan embodies Saint Francis’s communion with living creatures, the profound interconnection of humankind with our natural environment. He’s still inhaling fragrances of past and present, luxuriating in plants and animals and sacred springs, and if you feel estranged from Nature, his words will reawaken your connection to the Earth. His voice must be heard and heeded, to help us heal our world.”

“A magnificent and tender-hearted account of what it is to come alive in the world—alive to oneself, to the presence of all other living beings, and to the spiritual vitality that sustains it all. Beautifully written, wonderfully observed, quirky and pulsing with life. Just the kind of strong medicine we need to heal what ails us in the present moment.”

“This lyrical book, like the songs of the Comcaac people, is imbued with grace, humor, humility, and gratitude. From the Indiana Dunes to the Colorado Plateau, from the Sonoran Desert to the Bekaa valley of Lebanon, Gary Paul Nabhan, ethnobotanist and ecological monk, is inspired by the interbeing of both seascapes and desertscapes. The spiritual force carried by water, part of the complex web of nature’s reciprocities, flows through Nabhan’s prose like a form of bioluminescence. A flash of green power runs through his veins—refined by prayer, dream, and years of activism and community engagement—and finds a homecoming in the aperture of his soul. Having heard ‘the seabirds singing at the edge of the world,’ he has imagined a new literary form, an ecobiography, a convergence of natural history, poetry, and contemplative traditions, all fused within a brilliant life.”

“Water in the Desert is testimony to Gary Paul Nabhan’s lifelong dedication to the ‘heterologue’—the sumptuous, multispecies, sensory conversation of creature-full landscapes. Nabhan’s storied journey recounts a tangle of relations as fascinating as the ecotones he has had a hand in researching, including the creativity and persistence required to restore the reciprocal links between nature and culture, place and people, body and spirit, and science and poetry.”

“This book is an extraordinary testimony to the allure of the living Earth community in one person’s life. Nabhan is a brilliant ecologist and skilled nature writer responding to the miracle of biodiversity. He has been instrumental with others in preserving monarch butterfly migration as well as honoring Native sacred sites destroyed for a border wall. Gary is a fearless champion of life in its myriad forms who inspires us to do the same. May his writing and activism continue to light the way forward for the community of life.”