Over the years, but especially this trip, we've come to realize the importance of water. So many of the natural wonders we've seen have been formed at least in part by water (either through its running or freezing/thawing or dripping, etc.). Here, water, or lack thereof, will make or break a community. In past trips, as in this one, we've seen a lot of desert-type landscapes hard up against green, irrigated fields. This year, though, is the first time we've seen river beds completely dry. What natural water there is tends to look more like something you'd expect to see from a toxic waste dump: yellowy orange, in the middle of a salt flat, nothing that looks remotely potable.
The theme has played out here over centuries: the Ancestral Pueblos left their cliff dwellings at least in part due to drought. (And even before that, much of their water supply came from seepage from the sandstone, which looks like a damp spot on the rock wall.) Bryce, the namesake of the canyon, and his family created a ten-mile ditch, a project that failed the first time and took two years to complete, in order to re-route water from the Sevier River. Prior to that the community had been surviving on a trickle of water that, when we saw it at least, couldn't have been more than 6 inches wide.
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