This morning there would have been frost on the pumpkins, which doesn’t happen often out here. Our mailbox had some white stuff on top and the one side. At first I thought it was someone starting Halloween pranks early, then I realized it was frost, and how long it has been since I’ve seen a frosty morning. Out here we don’t get much frost or dew because the air is so dry. I remember a few years that it was a bit dry back in Wisconsin, but never like it is out here.
Out here it can go up to three months without rain. Fire season starts around mid-July when the rain has stopped, the snow is all melted, and the grass that started to grow is all dried up. During that very dry time people of the west argue over something that Wisconsinites take for granted – water. Coming from a place where water makes the summer air so humid you can taste it, the fight for water in the west seems unreal. Every spring we, here in Reno, are reminded of what days we can water our yard based on our street number – odd numbers some days, even numbers others – to save water. Some places in Las Vegas have a ban on grass so the water can be used for other things. Front lawns are landscaped with decorative stone and maybe a planter or two, and back yards have stone pathways with chairs on the side instead of the lush green areas I remember from childhood. Las Vegas could not exist without Lake Mead, created by the Hoover Dam. The Colorado River is dammed up in several other places between the Grand Canyon and the Gulf of California to provide water for cities in southern California along with Las Vegas. Now we are getting pictures of the “bathtub rings” round Lake Mead as it shrinks with the drought. Even Lake Tahoe is reportedly getting lower as cities take water faster than Mother Nature can replenish it. Every year there are discussions about water rights, which at first confused me. Cities argue about who is taking it all. As their city grows it needs more water but there is only so much to go around. Towns are growing as the water supply is shrinking. Sometimes I wonder if we should continue to build in places that are teetering on the edge of the desert. My fear is that with more homes and businesses the desert will grow as the water is used up. It takes a lot more effort to reclaim a desert than it does to make one.
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October 2021
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