Haibun: Bye Water

Standing at the dwindled, pungent shore of what was a full Salt River last spring, I remember back to the snow storms of my youth. Any snow in the mountains of Upstate New York, I’d be ready. On one snow storm, we invited a widow and her housemate to our house because the snow was going to be massive and she could lose electricity. I, excited, decided to have a barbecue. I loved the snow and now miss the snow.

Now as temperatures inch up—carbon stuffed more and more into our environment through burning fossil fuels and deforestation—the White Mountains of Arizona no longer get or hold the snow they did even a few decades ago. So that snow melt, that lingering source of streams that feed into the Salt River, along with a prolonged drought, means the Salt River is moving away from being a river and is progressing towards a memory we may or may not remember.

As we try to hide the desert with more and more people, we must face the reality that this warming trend is now shrinking the snow caps on the Rockies too, providing less and less water from the over allocated Colorado River. Like so many generations before, we are forced to think about water as we move around the desert. We are forced to be responsible under this harsh sun.

vanishing snow melt

dying river now smells, once was

autumn can be felt