Desert rat remembers a creek is actually a creek when it's not in the desert.

It's been ten years now of living full time in the desert and I've become accostomed to not having water. Ever. Much of my life is spent rambling around the Wild; these years in the drylands have made me ever concious of the prescient need for water. I agononize over water sources and conjour fanciful dreams of what I might find when a place on the map indicates there might be water there.

But in the desert a line on the map marked river more often than not really indicates nothing more than a arroyo where water could be present temporariliy if enough fell from the sky at one moment. Most often it's dry and everyone remains parched.

I'm from Montana originally and in my adolescense paid not a moment of thought to water sources, it was taken for granted that I would find water in almost any random draw in the mountains, any hollow, any nook or canyon, they all had water. I did not even think about it as a sprind was always to be found with just a little effort.

I realized today that my transformation to desert rat was fully complete as I spend a few days pondering what the water source would be like at our next camp and just in case we carried a full 20 gallons of water with us. Yes on the map there was indication of a creek but my primal mind would not believe the cartographers. We arrived to find a full blown river by desert standards and water litterally everywhere we could see and then it rained on us and then I knew we were going to be just fine.

Water, water everywhere and every drop to drink.