Water in the desert

From a young age, Gary Paul Nabhan was immersed in what ecologist E. O. Wilson called “the coma of the natural world.” Fascinated by the Lake Michigan sand dunes and their wildlife, little Nabhan was nicknamed “Dune Detective” by his loving Lebanese-American family. He was uncomfortable at school, where his tendency toward isolation and frustration with authorities led to diagnoses of disabilities, including "an introvert with introverted tendencies." This was in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was rarely toleratedNeurological differences, as well as providing the necessary support for them. Nabhan used to escape into the embrace of nature: “I enjoyed skipping school in the wetlands, and disappearing among dense forests of tule, river reeds, and reeds.” (He was later described as a “highly sensitive person,” a description that made more sense to him.)Nabhan, now over 70, has lived an extraordinary life as an ethnobotanist, field biologist, and fierce advocate for environmental justice. In “Water in the Desert: A Pilgrimage,” Nabhan charts his path from his childhood in the American Midwest to his life in the Southwest as a scientist and activist dedicated to the health of the region’s interwoven ecosystems of people, animals, rivers, and deserts. Nabhan attributes his love for the “edges and borders” of the Sonoran Desert to his roots in the Bekaa Valley on the border between Lebanon and Syria.The two current ones. Nabhan calls these borderlands an “ecological transition zone”: “a place full of peripheral environmental influences... precisely the kind of place where I felt the most comfort and belonging.”When ecological transition zones are at risk of ecological collapse, whether due to pollution, the climate crisis or, as now, war, Nabhan calls on the forces of ecologists' assistants: environmental emergency medical technicians. Nabhan's work organizing restoration projects among desert communities links the health of the land and water to the health of the people living there. Much of this work has focused on the springs and rivers that emerge from arid landscapes, sacred meeting places between water and desert, where 20% live.It is an endangered species in the United States.