WATER IN THE DESERT: A Pilgrimage - by Gary Paul Nabhan - Spotlight

 

From acclaimed agrarian activist and ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan, WATER IN THE DESERT (MilkweedEditions)  is a profoundly inspiring account of interspecies belonging, collaborative conservation, and the sacred work of caring for the earth.

“I went looking for water in the desert and found that the world was teaching me how to listen.”

Celebrated as a “world visionary” (Utne Reader) and our “lyrical poet of biodiversity” (Mother Jones), Gary Paul Nabhan has authored dozens of books and been awarded a MacArthur “genius grant.” In Water in the Desert, he traces the fascinating story of his life, offering in the process a vision for cultural renewal.

As a Lebanese-American boy growing up in the dunes along Lake Michigan’s southern shore, where school is excruciating and symptoms of neurodivergence are diagnosed as disabilities, Nabhan finds refuge and revelation in the natural world. In college, he gravitates to the thinkers now associated with the dawn of ecology as a discipline, writes poetry, and travels to Ecuador and Sonora, Mexico, where he first encounters the Indigenous communities that will come to play a significant role in his life and work. His interest in earth-based spiritual practices leads him to take vows as an Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, which reminds him that “the earth itself—creation, for that matter—was the original scripture.” Late in life, he returns to the land of his Arab ancestors, where he discovers a vision of kinship and climate resilience grounded in faith and ecology. And finally, when construction of the southern border wall begins, he collaborates with religious leaders to affirm Indigenous rights to the sacred places threatened by construction.

At once a refreshing account of a pathbreaking scientist-activist’s kinship with other species and cultures and an inspiring guide to the deeply collaborative ethic and practice of care required to flourish in kinship on Earth, Water in the Desert is a book for our time.

Dr. Gary Paul Nabhan is a desert conservation biologist, ethnobotanist, and agroecologist who is focused on the Sonoran Desert and the Middle East. 

He played a key role in the designations of the Silverbells as Ironwood Forest National Monument, the Tumacacoris as the first in situ botanical reserve on U.S. National Forests for crop wild relatives, and Metro Tucson as the first UNESCO City of Gastronomy in the U.S., for its agr-obiodiversity.

His ecological studies on plant/pollinator interactions, desert nurse plant guilds, rare cacti, and agaves have appeared in Nature, PNAS, BioScience, Ecological Applications, Conservation Biology, Natural Areas Journal, and Frontiers. 

He has served as Associate Director at both the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and Desert Botanical Garden, and has taught at all three of Arizona's state universities.