Running Out

I recently read Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains (2021, Princeton University Press).  Written by Lucas Bessire, an anthropologist at the University of Oklahoma, the book focuses on how the Ogallala Aquifer, which underlies a vast expanse of America’s heartland, is being rapidly depleted—i.e., it is “running out.”  For ages this vast supply of underground water lay covered by earth. Up until the 1930s farmers relied on water at or near the surface to sustain life on the High Plains.  But after the disastrous “Dust Bowl” years in the 1930s, there was an attitude among those who lived through those days of “never again,” accompanied by a dramatic shift toward reliance on water drawn from deeper sources.  At the time, the aquifer was seen as a limitless supply of water—an “underground ocean” or “underground rain.” (Humans have this tendency toward naively assuming the planet’s resources have no limits.)   

Of course, we know now that the water supply wasn’t limitless. In less than 80 years, the people living on the Plains have extracted unfathomable amounts of water from the ground—often wastefully.  They have dramatically transformed the landscape in the process.  Surface water is gone in most places and with it, the flora and fauna that once thrived in these areas.   Today, some places on the Ogallala have all but depleted the groundwater supply.  One of the worst areas of depletion is the area around the “Little Rock House” in Southwest Kansas.  This stone house was originally part of a cattle camp established by the author’s great-grandfather.  He recalls spending summers there as an adolescent.  His father now lives at the house and the author spends two years living with his dad while conducting research for his book.  

Maps of the Ogallala Aquifer [left] and the area around the Little Rock House [right],which
is located in Southwest Kansas, along the former Cimarron River.  .  
Source: Copied from Running Out.

 In the course of his work, the author discovers that, like so many environmental issues, depletion on the High Plains defies easy answers. His research reveals complex personal and political interactions in play that muddy the waters.  For example, Bessire attends several meetings of the Groundwater Management District (GMD) Southwest—the board that regulates groundwater use in Southwest Kansas.  Almost from the start, something felt odd about the meetings, but he couldn’t quite figure out what it was.  He later comes to the realization that the most influential GMD board members represent agribusiness corporations—who are the groundwater users.  Furthermore, one has to possess water rights in order to have a vote.  In practical terms, this means that the decisions about water use are made by a small number of mostly white men—even though the working-class population most significantly impacted by the depletion of the aquifer is much more diverse.  The GMD pursues a policy of controlled depletion, arguing in essence that to do anything else would wreck the local economy and destroy the “rural way of life” on the High Plains. (Similar arguments are commonly used to argue against taking meaningful action to protect the environment.)  Bessire observes that:

 

“Corporate profits depend on aquifer depletion. In other words, there is a multimillion-dollar corporate interest to prevent regulation and to pump the water until its gone”—Bones, p. 78

 

Just like an aquifer is composed of overlapping layers of sediment, the author discovers that depletion is much more complex than he had assumed when he started his research.  When he began, he though he knew who was to blame for depletion, but he discovers there’s a whole lot more going on beneath those dry riverbeds than meets the eye.  As Bessire says it, “Depletion condenses the most urgent conundrums of our times into a single drama.  On the High Plains, it blurs the boundary between the planetary and the personal”—Notes to the Reader, p. xii.

 

Along the way, the author comes face-to-face with his own complicity in “running out.”  Bessire explains how, as a young adult, he literally “ran out” on the High Plains.  He left home to go to college and had and had no plans to come back.  And he didn’t—until he returned to research his book.  During the time he spends living at the Little Rock House, he and his father rebuild their previously estranged relationship.  In fact, his dad becomes a true partner in his research.  At the onset the author takes the lead on many of the interviews, but by later in the book his father is clearly taking the lead.  In fact, Bessire later realizes that many of the people who agree to be interviewed for the book did so as a favor to their friend Tony.

 

The author’s great-grandfather (RW) was among the second wave of white settlers to this region.  The wells his great-grandfather dug played a major role in drying up the surface water in the area around the Little Rock House.  Bessire comments that, “There are plenty of stories about RW.  None are about stewardship.  Most suggest that we he was singularly focused on agribusiness.  Someone told me that RW thought he could violate the laws of nature and make money doing it.”—Lines, p. 17. 

 

In contrast to RW, the author is guided by wisdom collected by another of his ancestors, whom he discovers became an early advocate for conservation.  In a dusty file cabinet at the Little Rock House, he finds crinkled Manilla file folders and binders containing writings compiled by his grandmother (Lila “Fern”) about a variety of topics.  Fern died when the author was 12, so his memories interactions with her are sketchy, enshrouded in the mists of childhood perceptions.  However, he distinctly remembers her walking him across the pastures to visit the memorial for the nearby Wagon Bed Springs—which even then existed only in her grandmother’s memories.  He later learns that his grandmother played an important role in helping to determine the location of the springs and lobby for the memorial to be created. 

 

In talking to others about Fern, he learns that she is a kindred spirit.  Like him, she was often at odds with her father, and she too “ran out” on the High Plains.  The day she turned 18, she left the farm and got married.  After World War II, her husband Roy returned “broken” from his experience.  Against Fern’s wishes, they returned to the Little Rock House, where she would live out the rest of her days, “stuck in a small prairie world under the thumb of less talented men”—Lines, p. 21.  When she was in her mid-thirties, she had what was called a “nervous breakdown” and spent time in two different mental institutions. While Fern didn’t describe that experience in her writings, the author learns a great deal about what his grandmother likely endured from a six-part exposé published in a Wichita newspaper in 1974 by a woman named Betty Wells, who spent eight days at the place where Fern was first sent.

After returning from her time spent in the institutions, Fern became obsessed with learning about the past and trying to reconstruct it—most notably, her work to document the location of Wagon Bed Springs.  Fern’s efforts never led to any published works when she was alive.  But she would probably be proud that all these years later, her writings served as an invaluable guide to her grandson’s quest to understand depletion.  More than once, he returns to her dog-eared, often hand-written notes to help him figure out the “next step” in his research.

 

The author also becomes keenly aware of how forces of depletion played a role in making the life he had growing up on the Plains possible.  While walking on his father’s farm, he recalls a time as a child when he found a bison bone.  This leads him to research the details about the eradication of the Plains buffalo herds. In the span of three years between 1871 and 1874, it is estimated that between three and seven million bison were killed within a hundred-mile radius of the Little Rock House.  This mass slaughter had the effect of displacing the Native American populations living in that area that depended on bison for survival, which in turn made it possible for his white ancestors to take possession of the land.  He also discovers stories of forced relocation—and even genocide—of the indigenous populations that once resided on or near the land on which he grew up. Learning the details of these atrocities has a powerful impact on the author’s understanding of depletion.  

He realizes that even though he never killed a buffalo, or mistreated a Native person, or drew a single drop of water from the ground himself, in order for he and his family to live the life of relative privilege they lived on the High Plains these atrocities had to be committed against the native inhabitants of this land—both human and non-human—and the native environment.  

 

Bessire talks about what I will call the slipperiness of memory.  On one hand, we rely upon our memories to reconstruct the past.  For example, he relied on the stories told to him by numerous people about past events to compile his story.  But, on the other hand, he reflects on how we typically have selective amnesia in terms of what we remember and how we remember it.  History tends to be told from a particular point of view—often that of the dominant power.  This certainly was the case in the stories he was told as a child about bison herds and Native peoples.  He reflects, that: 

“We lived among the rubble of genocide and dispossession in a landscape that had been transformed.  Nothing seemed as fascinating as the chips of flint and arrowheads and old bullets and potsherds secreted among the last ribbons of native shortgrass. And nothing seemed as innocent. Only now do I see that their allure was part of displacing the monstrous events that allowed me to inhabit the Plains.  We confined the horrors of eradication to a cartoonish lost world; one that we thought was entirely disconnected from our own.”  He notes that these things were rarely if ever discussed and even when they were, “their significance was largely blocked off from our memories”—Bones, pp. 129–130.

 

While this book focused primarily on the issue of aquifer depletion on the High Plains, the author summarizes similar stories of depletion that play out all around the world in areas that are heavily dependent of groundwater for survival.  The specific circumstances of each location are unique, but there are common themes of depletion running through all these regions.  As Bessire describes it:

 

“Depletion flourishes wherever people inhabit the residues of settler invasions and forgotten genocides, traces of destroyed ecosystems, surges of boom–bust despair and simmering resentment, chemical disruptions, and the specter of more heat and drought.  In these zones, similar histories and technologies coincide with scarred landscapes and ideologies of unceasing productivity and profit that easily blur into militant fundamentalism’s when they collapse”—Afterword, pp. 178–179.

 

As people of faith, I think engaging stories like Running Out can help us wrestle with our call to be stewards of Earth as we grapple with complex issues related to preserving the increasingly depleted natural resources of our world and protecting its environment.  I wonder how many of us might relate to the author’s story.  Could we write our own tales of “running out” in our own local context?  The author includes a quote that he found in Fern’s notes.  While she applied to her personal recovery, it spoke to me about the attitude we need to have toward environmental issues. She said, “The first step in my own reclamation of command is to admit that I am not responsible for the past, but I am accountable to tomorrow”—Dust, p. 133.  

 

Often when confronted with a complex issue like climate change, we say things like, “I am not responsible for what happened in the past.”  And, of course, we’re correct on a personal level, but it strikes me that such a mindset seems to have become our society’s de facto excuse to maintain the status quo when it comes to the environment.  While it’s true that we can’t change—and we’re not responsible for—what has gone on before us, there’s a real sense that we are, as Fern said it, “accountable to tomorrow.”  

 

How will future generations judge us?  The jury is still out; although, toward the end of the book, the author muses that, considering what we’ve already done to the world they will inherit, they might not be too kind toward us.  The truth is, though, the story is still being written.  The future world is not fully formed yet.   The decisions we make (or choose not to make) help to shape that world.  As Bessire did in the process of researching Running Out, we each have an obligation to reckon with how the life we live contributes to the depletion of resources and/or degradation of our environment.  But it’s not enough just to know; we need to find ways to act on what we’ve learned—both individually and corporately. 

 

With the future of the planet that we call home hanging in the balance, it seems clear that water is not the only nonrenewable resource that is running out; even time itself seems to be slipping through the dusty hourglass.  The latest (sixth) IPCC report reminds us—in the strongest language to date—that the status quo isn’t sustainable.  The change we are seeing has an increasingly undeniable human “footprint.” The “band-aid fixes” to date simply aren’t adequate to address the problem of global climate change.  Failure to take more meaningful action to move away from such heavy dependence on fossil fuels and to otherwise mitigate the effects of climate change could have disastrous consequences for future generations. When it comes to the issue of climate, we face what Dr. King called the fierce urgency of now.  The decisions we make (or refuse to make) today impact the world our children, and their children, inherit.  Putting them off for the “next generation” to decide is no longer a viable option.