Thursday, June 21, 2012

Quenching and Slaking

or A Dry Heat

Not All of N.M. Burning 

Or so said the headline of a recent article in the Albuquerque Journal.  The governor had issued a message encouraging tourists to visit, pointing out that the wildfires raging in the southern part of the state really cover only a small part of the whole, and that most places are still open for business as usual.  But the headline made it sound as if the fires are so bad that saying what isn't burning is easier than saying what is.

The largest fire, the Whitewater-Baldy fire in the Gila Wilderness, has seared almost 300,000 acres, or 464 square miles.  It's 87% contained, but in the most rugged, inaccessible terrain, "islands" of fire are still burning.  The Gila will have to wait for the monsoon rains in July to quench the blaze, to extinguish it completely.


Quench is such a wonderful word, wet but with a snap to it:  as if squelch and crunch are in cahoots. It's a word that's crossed my mind often this week, the first of summer, with the sun at its zenith and temperatures in Albuquerque mounting to 99°F/37C while humidity levels sink to 4 or 5%.  This is the one time of year when walls around a small garden, trapping and concentrating heat, do not help.  The garden is thirsty.  The spring plantings are struggling.  While the established things can take the heat, I'm doing a lot of hand-watering to keep the new ones alive.  Every so often I forget one—or two, or three—or don't judge its needs quite right.  (Prairie smoke/Geum triflorum:  who knew it would be so fussy?)  After two or three days the survivors among the younglings, despite thick mulch and deep watering, are already thirsty again.


I know how they feel.  I don't think I've stopped being thirsty since moving to New Mexico, and summer is something else again.  Summer is thirsty with exclamation points.  With ashes from the latest fire in the bosque blowing on a hot wind, stinging your eyes and catching in your throat, a drink of cool, clear water is a precious thing.  One glass follows another, all day long.

Thirst isn't really something you can quench.  Slake, yes—another wonderfully wet word; a slurp in league with a lake.  Slake comes from slacken, to let up, to ease.  You can slacken thirst, offer it a little more play on the line.  But you can't extinguish it.  You can't put it out.  You may think you have, but in a little while you, like the garden plants, will be thirsty all over again.  The only way to quench thirst for good and all is to stop being alive.

I've always seen thirst, whether my own or the garden's, as kind of a nuisance.  It's a need, a neediness, when there are more interesting things to do than to stop for a drink of water.  In a way, though, needs like thirst are really signs of life.  If we stop needing, we'll have stopped living.  As the old saying goes, where there's life there's hope—and what is hope but another kind of thirst?  You certainly don't want to quench it as if it were a wildfire, something dangerous and out of control.  Instead you rejoice when it's slaked by even a trickle of whatever is water to your spirit.   That trickle satisfies like a long, tall drink of water in a dry heat.

Trickle:  a drip befriending a tickle.

At least for a while.

19 comments:

  1. Beautiful post. Your reflections on thirst and its relationship to hope and life are deep and lovely. Made me think of a song we sing in church, "My soul is thirsting for you, my God..."

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    1. Sheila, thank you. That's the kind of thirst I had in mind.

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  2. That is why our walled garden has arrow slits in the walls. Not a large opening, but it makes a huge difference just by allowing the air to move and prevent the heat building up even more. Not a breeze, but not dead air.

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    1. Diana, that kind of vent makes good sense, especially in your much stronger summer weather. The biggest heat trap here, unfortunately, is the house wall--two stories, so while it gives good shade in the afternoon, it still absorbs and reflects a lot of heat in the morning.

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  3. I was wondering how you were and where you were in relation to the fires. I have driven through NM in the hot summer not staying long on my way to live in AZ for 2 yrs while in school. The heat is too much for me and even though I whine, I prefer the NE. I love to visit NM though.

    Your post left me wanting to quench a long thirst. A dry desert one deep in my soul. I hope I can do that soon as I look at my last yr of working in a 9-5 job. I hope it will be my last and I can search for a way to slake it with a trickle a little at a time...after all I want to savor every drop. Just a fabulous post Stacy.

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    1. Donna, fortunately the big fires are at least 150 miles away. The cottonwood forest (the bosque) along the Rio Grande here in town has just had small fires, but they've had the potential to be much more damaging since the area is so much more densely inhabited--that's just a couple of miles away from me. The smoke is a bigger concern at my house than actual fire, though.

      I don't think I'd be able to handle the heat in AZ, but mostly I find it manageable here. At least there are a few hours almost every morning that are perfectly lovely!

      I hope you get to ease that thirst to visit the desert soon. I know this part of the country has a special place in your heart. Hang on one more year...

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  4. In contrast we're totally quenched in London at the moment, they've even lifted the hose-pipe ban.

    I don't think I am thirsty for anything, maybe I should be - you've given me something to think about.

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    1. b-a-g, congratulations on the hose-pipe ban lift. Not that it sounds like you've been tempted to do any extra watering anyway, but it's always good to know the option is there if the rain stops... It does seem to have been relentless over there. Hope you get a sunny break soon.

      I remember a friend asking me what my dreams were a couple of years ago and being at a loss. I think a little bit of thirst might be a good thing.

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  5. It was 97 degrees today and 90 yesterday in the shade. Everything looked sad from the dryness and heat. I recall the first summer I lived in NM and had to go to bed with a glass of water on the nightstand. Unfortunately, the thirstiness isn't mitigated with time, but one becomes accustomed to it.

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    1. It's just wrong to have that kind of heat in Ssnta Fe, GirlSprout! Everything goes so quickly from early summer green to hot summer wilt. I thought I'd be used to the dryness from having grown up in CO, but all those years in the NE must have softened me up.

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  6. I'd meant to say, Stacy, that The Guardian newspaper had a full page article about the NM fires - you're global news! Out of control fires aren't really something we experience in the UK. Sometimes, in really dry summers, there may be heathland or woodland fires but nothing on the same scale; nothing to compare. They must be so very frightening to experience. The Australian bush-fires of a year or two ago were just – incredible. Almost alien in their ferocity. Glad your safe (if hot and thirsty). As Bag says, summer here is more of a damp squib – rain and cold, cold and rain. Dave

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    1. A full page, Dave--there's impressive! Lately a couple of nasty fires are burning in Colorado close to some populated areas, so I feel a little guilty harping on ours now. What you say about the ferocity of the fires in Australia reminds me that the firefighters here were saying that some parts of the Whitewater-Baldy fire looked like a nuclear blast had hit--they'd burned so hot that everything was utterly destroyed--whereas some areas had burned cooler and just had the undergrowth burned away. Apparently the pines can really super-heat. I wonder what the fuel was in the Australian fires.

      I'm sorry about your damp squib of a summer! As much as I like to dramatize the weather for a good blog post I'd still rather be hot and feel like we've had a SUMMER.

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    2. The main fuel was eucalypts, Stacy. Rather like pines, eucalypts burn only too well. They are high in oil and there were reports of them exploding during the bush-fires. Scary, huh? Exploding trees! Several years of drought didn't help neither. D

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  7. That makes me feel so much better about wanting new plants! I'll be certain to tell my husband if I wasn't still wanting, I'd be dead! ;) The wildfires are heartbreaking. It has turned hot here (105 heat index today) - and the second I step outside I am parched. I actually feel sorry for the plants that are stuck in the dirt, unable to escape the heat.

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    1. Holley, I'd love to know how that one goes over with your husband... This is the time of year when even the full sun plants are saying, "I didn't mean it! I'm really a shade plant at heart!"

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  8. I cannot imagine living in a place that has these wildfires, heat and water restrictions. Yet, your state has one of the prettiest landscapes in the country. The colors of the desert are amazing. I like your use of words today. I learned slake.

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    1. Donna, NM is such a place of extremes -- not that Niagara Falls isn't, of course, only at the other end of the spectrum. I often think about living someplace rural here and then decide that having to worry about fire every year isn't worth it.

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  9. LOL, Stacy, just reading this made me thirsty -- even though the humidity here is pretty high and I've got my bottomless mug of tea close at hand. But all this word play made me grin with delight.

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    1. I'm so glad you enjoyed the word play, Jean! We just had a little shower (!) that cooled things down--and I'm still thirsty...

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