Author Craig Childs searches for the secret knowledge of water.
Diviner Inspiration   Craig Childs and the search for desert
waters  Chief Inspector of Rainstorms. It's a job first held
down by Henry David Thoreau, who appointed himself to the
position some 150 years ago on the banks of Walden Pond. The
chief duties include watching the clouds form, measuring rain
puddles and following bees to their hidden cache of water.
Somebody's got to do it. Right?  For Craig Childs, the answer is
an emphatic yes. The Secret Knowledge of Water (Sasquatch Books,
Seattle) is an integral chapter in the essential story of the
human experience, an attempt to rediscover the misplaced tales
in a landscape where water -- both in its scarcity and its
abundance -- is everything.  If the elusive knowledge Childs
writes of were to be captured in a visual image, a freeze-frame
capturing the essence of the elemental, the best image would not
be a raging river or bubbling spring, but perhaps the dry desert
canyons themselves, fluid an