Photo by Lisa L. Johnson
A few days before we left, Gomez handed me an empty plastic jug, along with excited, cryptic instructions.
“It’s the best water in the world. And it’s free, just coming out of the rock.The pipe is at the highway on the river, near the Mashed Potatoes, right before the dump. It’s on the side of the road, under an overhang. Trust me, it’ll be easy to find—other people will be there. Please, bring me back a gallon.”
Early in the morning, after a sleepless night in the cacophonous Slickrock campground, we drove to the pipe.
The mythical wellspring seemed more like a plumbing error than a bastion of the desert’s most coveted and scarce delicacy. On the shoulder of a highway, sandwiched between a ruddy-brown river and a five-story sandstone wall, we found the pipe at a gravel turnout beside the cliff. The pipe was made of thick, oxidized metal, S-curved at the neck, and mysteriously emerging from the rock. Water leaked at an inconsistent rate onto the gravel and mysteriously washed back into the cliff through a crack in its base.
In faded white spraypaint, stenciled letters warned “NO BATHING.”Someone, perhaps in filthy need, had crossed out the “NO” with a black permanent marker. Other markings littered the overhang, scratched into the black Navajo sandstone. I noticed with quiet guilt the thick words “TOURISTS SUCK” scrawled next to “WATER FOR FREE!”
Throughout our tour of the Moab desert, I pondered the tenuous relationship that must exist between the locals and the tourists. The town of Moab would scarcely exist without the constant flow of interstate commerce, but scarcity remains on the forefront of a desert inhabitant’s consciousness. How much can a place like this give up to its visitors? And at what cost?
Modern irrigation and well-stocked grocery stores can likely accommodate, but I fear the desert’s greatest asset—solitude—cannot be replaced.
