Water rules these desert highlands.  Its scarcity in the Chihuahuan desert decrees that only those specie most efficient at conserving moisture will survive the summer.

This desert demands survival not of the fittest, but of the least thirsty.

We hardened Texas desert dwellers don’t complain too loudly about brown grass waving at an endless chain of arid days—if Far West Texas was eternally green and lush, we’d be overrun with city folks. We’d need traffic lights in every town bigger than Valentine, and Lupitas couldn’t serve enough burritos to fill so many bellies. We don’t fight the lack of water out here.

That doesn’t mean we don’t suffer when we see skinny calves following their skinny mamas across pastures stripped bare of grass, or piñons fruited with hollow nuts. It means we pour any leftover iced tea onto the scraggly rosemary plant out front. Our loyal herb never grows any taller, but it also refuses to die. Perseverance is the way of the desert, where Water is a benevolent despot, bestowing life and color onto the land. Just not very often.

If Water is King, Rain is the high desert’s court jester, a charitable prankster with a fickle sense of humor. Rains fall repeatedly on the same pasture, leaving neighbors begging for even a sprinkle; rain falls on the mountain, but away from the watershed to the main tank; rain floods the unpaved back streets of Fort Davis, morphing ankle-deep dust into quagmires of mud; rain raises the trickle that was Limpia Creek so high, so fast, residents of Limpia Crossing can’t drive through the crossing to get home from work. Rain sends tourists scampering for shelter, interrupting the festive 4^th of July parade. We get about 8”-12” of precipitation annually, and you ought to be here the day we get it.

So, out here, we pray a lot. We pray, for months on end, for rain. We know this dry land for what it is; we accept that desert is where we are planted, and yet, in churches across the Trans-Pecos, we stoic desert folk pray for rain like child in a Brooklyn tenement prays for a pony to ride to school. Just enough rain to fatten the little calves, perhaps a few drops to blossom out the prickly pear on the south slope. Selective rain. Rain on demand, please You God.

It is easy to beseech God for rain, natural to hope that rain comes on our timetable, to hope that ranchers don't have to sell off cattle and fawns fatten up enough to survive the winter. But dreary days of gloomy skies aren't an issue in our lives out here in Big Bend country, so I hope we offer enough thanks for those days rain doesn't fall. And when it finally comes? The first rain makes the desert smile and colors the sky with laughter.

   FIRST RAIN on Blue Mountain
                                                                                     36" x 24" pastel   copyright Lindy C Severns 2010
It isn't rainy season as I write this, but it was back in June, when I painted this. (And our skies really do look like this—no artistic license involved!)  This painting is one of 3 new LCS paintings featured at Kiowa Gallery, Alpine TX during the 2010 Artwalk Alpine held the weekend before Thanksgiving.

For purchase information, contact Keri at Kiowa Gallery .  And to see more images of the Davis Mountains and Big Bend country in the Far West of Texas, visit my website,  BigBendArtist.com