Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Further Notes on the Drylands

The summer’s fires still burned through the depths of winter, hidden from sight beneath the black scars on the land where they had previously raged. They slumbered now, patiently waiting for the inevitable turning of the seasons. The winter had not been cold enough, nor had there been enough snow, to douse the flames. And when spring came and the days began to lengthen and warm, the fires would be ready to rise from the dark earth and begin to feed again. 

It hardly felt like winter, except for two weeks of such bitter cold that everyone was left feeling as though they had been transported to some far polar clime. There were as many days above freezing as below it seemed. When it snowed warmth soon followed, returning the hills to a barren state. Even in the valleys they could see the brown grass poking up through the thin patches of white. The snow did not melt so much as evaporate, the ground still frozen far below so that the water could not penetrate.  

Rivers, which had dwindled to trickles over the summer and fall, continued to shrink until it seemed the flow might cease entirely. Reservoirs and lakes were low, exposing the pipes where water was pumped out to the surrounding communities. Everywhere they looked bare, silted and creviced land was exposed. They felt exposed too; the world they thought they lived in had gone away and what came next was unclear.  

In centuries past it was said there were droughts in these parts that lasted for decades. 40 years of drylands. The last hundred or so had been wet ones by comparison, though not without dry years intermixed. The usual way of things had been a few years of dry, followed by a few years of wet, balancing everything out. Water had not exactly been plentiful, but there had been more than enough for growing communities, expanding irrigation and oil drilling. Now it was clear there would not be enough for things to go on as usual.  

Politicians spoke of crisis, of not watering lawns or taking shorter showers, to ensure there would be enough water this year for farmers irrigating, communities to drink and oil companies to drill. A crisis suggested this was a temporary moment, from which there would be a return to normality. But if the aberration had been the last century, with its lack of decade spanning drought, then it was a crisis so much as a return to an old equilibrium, hurried on by a warming climate. No one wanted to acknowledge that possibility, for it mean the end of life as it had been in these parts.