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(Arid lands) are full
of dead people and cultures because the weather fluctuates a
great deal. For aridity is more than just dryness; it is guaranteed
uncertainty.
- Charles Bowden, Killing
the Hidden Waters
Desert soils the world over have the top horizon filled with
tubelike air holes formed by the rapid expansion of soil gasses
that occurs when summer rains wet the hot ground. I scratch
away the pavement and find a puffy, porous soil, full of holes,
beneath.
- Ann Haymond Zwinger, Mysterious
Lands
The deserts should never be reclaimed. They are the breathing
spaces of the west and should be preserved forever.
- John Van Dyke, The Desert
The humans who confronted the Pima and the Papago in the late
nineteenth century and early twentieth century believed the
desert either nonexistant, or, at worst, temporary ... For the
Americans the problem in the arid west, and in the part called
the Sonoran desert, was not any shortage of resources, but rather
a failure by earlier inhabitants in the area of technique. What
was needed was know-how.
- Charles Bowden, Killing
the Hidden Waters |
