Water Bodies

Water Bodies considers what becomes endangered when we lose sight of the power of water.

 “This book packs a narrative, poetic wallop. Having such fine and powerful voices gathered around a single subject makes the rain want to come.”
—CRAIG CHILDS, Tracing Time

The human experience has always been shaped by water, by its absence and its abundance. Now, as the climate crisis worsens, dry riverbeds and record  floods  remind  us  that  water  was  never  merely  a  resource  to  be  managed or a commodity to be sold. It wields the power to reshape continents  and  capture  our  imaginations, a force as beguiling and as it is seductive. In Water Bodies, some of the West’s most thoughtful writers remind us why stories about water stretch back as far as we can remember: where we find water, we find ourselves.

Laura Paskus (editor) is a longtime reporter based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has worked for High Country News, Tribal College Journal, KUNM-FM, New Mexico Political Report, and Capital & Main, and currently, is a senior producer for NMPBS. Her 2020 book, At the Precipice: New Mexico’s Changing Climate won the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Nature/Environment.