Reasons To Be Cheerful · 7 hours ago

Letting a River Act Like a River

For decades, Anglo settlers tried to tame New Mexico's Gila River, channeling it into a narrow path that by 1960 had cut its floodplain to less than half its historic width. But when people finally stopped bulldozing and let the river reclaim its space, something essential returned: the messy, sprawling floodplain that connects native cottonwoods and willows to groundwater through underground channels carved by floods. Scientist Martha Cooper recalls the moment her foot broke through sediment to reveal "water rushing underneath" -- evidence of the river's hidden architecture, where even "big, messy" floods aren't destruction but creation, carving channels that sustain life through drought. The lesson radiating outward to the parched Southwest is both simple and revolutionary: "It's not farms or fish. It's farms and fish." Sometimes the most radical act of stewardship is stepping back and letting a river remember what it has always known how to be.