Water in the Desert
A Pilgrimage
Will be published approx. on 16. July 2026
Book
Hardback
352 pages
978-1-57131-169-6 (ISBN)
Description
An NPR Most Anticipated Book of the Summer
"A generous invitation to follow the many streams that flow into the river of Gary Paul Nabhan's remarkable life and work."-Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass
"I have waited decades for these epic tales to be gathered in one serpentine narrative capable of rattling our souls."-Terry Tempest Williams, author of The Glorians
From acclaimed agrarian activist and ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan, a profoundly inspiring account of interspecies belonging, collaborative conservation, and the sacred work of caring for the earth.
"I went looking for water in the desert and found that the world was teaching me how to listen."
Celebrated as a "world visionary" (Utne Reader) and our "lyrical poet of biodiversity" (Mother Jones), Gary Paul Nabhan has authored dozens of books and been awarded a MacArthur "genius grant." In Water in the Desert, he traces the fascinating story of his life, offering in the process a vision for cultural renewal.
As a Lebanese-American boy growing up in the dunes along Lake Michigan's southern shore, where school is excruciating and symptoms of neurodivergence are diagnosed as disabilities, Nabhan finds refuge and revelation in the natural world. In college, he gravitates to the thinkers now associated with the dawn of ecology as a discipline, writes poetry, and travels to Ecuador and Sonora, Mexico, where he first encounters the Indigenous communities that will come to play a significant role in his life and work. His interest in earth-based spiritual practices leads him to take vows as an Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, which reminds him that "the earth itself-creation, for that matter-was the original scripture." Late in life, he returns to the land of his Arab ancestors, where he discovers a vision of kinship and climate resilience grounded in faith and ecology. And finally, when construction of the southern border wall begins, he collaborates with religious leaders to affirm Indigenous rights to the sacred places threatened by construction.
At once a refreshing account of a pathbreaking scientist-activist's kinship with other species and cultures and an inspiring guide to the deeply collaborative ethic and practice of care required to flourish in kinship on Earth, Water in the Desert is a book for our time.
"A generous invitation to follow the many streams that flow into the river of Gary Paul Nabhan's remarkable life and work."-Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass
"I have waited decades for these epic tales to be gathered in one serpentine narrative capable of rattling our souls."-Terry Tempest Williams, author of The Glorians
From acclaimed agrarian activist and ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan, a profoundly inspiring account of interspecies belonging, collaborative conservation, and the sacred work of caring for the earth.
"I went looking for water in the desert and found that the world was teaching me how to listen."
Celebrated as a "world visionary" (Utne Reader) and our "lyrical poet of biodiversity" (Mother Jones), Gary Paul Nabhan has authored dozens of books and been awarded a MacArthur "genius grant." In Water in the Desert, he traces the fascinating story of his life, offering in the process a vision for cultural renewal.
As a Lebanese-American boy growing up in the dunes along Lake Michigan's southern shore, where school is excruciating and symptoms of neurodivergence are diagnosed as disabilities, Nabhan finds refuge and revelation in the natural world. In college, he gravitates to the thinkers now associated with the dawn of ecology as a discipline, writes poetry, and travels to Ecuador and Sonora, Mexico, where he first encounters the Indigenous communities that will come to play a significant role in his life and work. His interest in earth-based spiritual practices leads him to take vows as an Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, which reminds him that "the earth itself-creation, for that matter-was the original scripture." Late in life, he returns to the land of his Arab ancestors, where he discovers a vision of kinship and climate resilience grounded in faith and ecology. And finally, when construction of the southern border wall begins, he collaborates with religious leaders to affirm Indigenous rights to the sacred places threatened by construction.
At once a refreshing account of a pathbreaking scientist-activist's kinship with other species and cultures and an inspiring guide to the deeply collaborative ethic and practice of care required to flourish in kinship on Earth, Water in the Desert is a book for our time.
Reviews / Votes
"An earnest and empathic book about planetary belonging."-Kirkus Reviews"A master class on how to write a spiritual eco-autobiography. . . . It has a specular quality that invites readers into deeper attention to their own lives."-Sojourner Magazine
"Water in the Desert is a generous invitation to follow the many streams that flow into the river of Gary Paul Nabhan's remarkable life and work. Drawing on family, teachers, cultures, and the teachings of diverse biocultural landscapes, he brings science to the service of land and culture, showing us what it looks like to reciprocate the gifts of nature with gifts of head, hands, and heart."-Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass
"Gary Paul Nabhan is a pilgrim, a prophet, and plant-loving, seed-dropping, chili-sniffing scientist who has never forgotten that what binds food, cultures, and climate together are stories. Water in the Desert is more than a memoir; it is a series of stories illuminated by Nabhan's charismatic curiosity, ecological rigor, and loving actions in the generative service of diverse communities, both human and wild. I have waited decades for these epic tales to be gathered in one serpentine narrative capable of rattling our souls. This book offers a spiritual practice to those seeking instructions on the art of engagement, given to us by a poet who plants seeds religiously along his path of earthly devotion."-Terry Tempest Williams, author of The Glorians
"Water in the Desert is the enthralling story of a world-class ethnobotanist and agrarian visionary."-Denis Hayes, coordinator of the inaugural Earth Day celebration
"Set against the upheavals of the late 1960s, this fascinating account follows a young man whose political awakening, illness, and retreat into wild places become acts of survival. Gary Paul Nabhan beautifully recounts a story of moral courage as well as the transformative power of the natural world. Readers will be captivated by Water in the Desert, its meaning, resistance, and wonder resonating long after the last page."-Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Fencing with the King and Crescent
"Gary Paul Nabhan is a human pollinator, cross-fertilizing and enlivening all the touches. With this remarkable and inspiring book, that work will continue far into the future."-Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift
"Water in the Desert is a naturalist's trance, an inspiring and compelling parable about healing and repair in a time of destruction. With his deep empathy for people, commitment to a life's work, and scientific rigor, Gary Paul Nabhan has the eye of a naturalist and the voice of a prophet. Brother, father, and defender, Nabhan not only has taught us what the desert smells like, but models for us a deep respect for the cultures that arose from that land and for the wisdom of their relationships with other species. Water in the Desert reminds us that the world sang us all into being and offers us vivid dreams of sentient beings and ancestors, ecotones and song maps, stories of caretaking and Ojos de Aguas, racism and Martin Luther King's assassination and, finally, seeing the world whole. Nabhan is a translator between worlds, an edge walker who prefers solitude but knows animals as kin, and helps us to see and to smell and to love. Water in the Desert shows that life was always waiting for Nabhan, and for all of us."-Peter Forbes, author of A Man Apart
"Soul-nourishing, wildly informative, crucially redemptive, and not to be missed!"-Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Everything Comes Next
"Gary Paul Nabhan's extraordinary empathy for the Earth shines through in this luminous, enlightening, and compelling book. As a toddler taking in the songs and scents of the world around him, he exemplified a child's bonding with Nature. As a youth he explored the sand dunes and deep waters of Lake Michigan, their flora and fauna; he took part in launching the first Earth Day, became a scientist, an activist, a champion of local food. From the deserts of the Southwest and the Sahara to the Sea of Cortes, the Pacific Ocean, and the Mediterranean, his deep involvement with Indigenous peoples and their sacred sites is exemplary. Nabhan embodies Saint Francis's communion with living creatures, the profound interconnection of humankind with our natural environment. He's still inhaling fragrances of past and present, luxuriating in plants and animals and sacred springs, and if you feel estranged from Nature, his words will reawaken your connection to the Earth. His voice must be heard and heeded, to help us heal our world."-Homero Aridjis, author of Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence
"A magnificent and tender-hearted account of what it is to come alive in the world-alive to oneself, to the presence of all other living beings, and to the spiritual vitality that sustains it all. Beautifully written, wonderfully observed, quirky and pulsing with life. Just the kind of strong medicine we need to heal what ails us in the present moment."-Douglas E. Christie, author of The Blue Sapphire of the Mind
"This lyrical book, like the songs of the Comcaac people, is imbued with grace, humor, humility, and gratitude. From the Indiana Dunes to the Colorado Plateau, from the Sonoran Desert to the Bekaa valley of Lebanon, Gary Paul Nabhan, ethnobotanist and ecological monk, is inspired by the interbeing of both seascapes and desertscapes. The spiritual force carried by water, part of the complex web of nature's reciprocities, flows through Nabhan's prose like a form of bioluminescence. A flash of green power runs through his veins-refined by prayer, dream, and years of activism and community engagement-and finds a homecoming in the aperture of his soul. Having heard 'the seabirds singing at the edge of the world,' he has imagined a new literary form, an ecobiography, a convergence of natural history, poetry, and contemplative traditions, all fused within a brilliant life."-Scott Chaskey, author of Soil and Spirit
"Water in the Desert is testimony to Gary Paul Nabhan's lifelong dedication to the 'heterologue'-the sumptuous, multispecies, sensory conversation of creature-full landscapes. Nabhan's storied journey recounts a tangle of relations as fascinating as the ecotones he has had a hand in researching, including the creativity and persistence required to restore the reciprocal links between nature and culture, place and people, body and spirit, and science and poetry."-Gavin Van Horn, author of The Way of Coyote
"This book is an extraordinary testimony to the allure of the living Earth community in one person's life. Nabhan is a brilliant ecologist and skilled nature writer responding to the miracle of biodiversity. He has been instrumental with others in preserving monarch butterfly migration as well as honoring Native sacred sites destroyed for a border wall. Gary is a fearless champion of life in its myriad forms who inspires us to do the same. May his writing and activism continue to light the way forward for the community of life."-Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, co-directors of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Minneapolis
United States
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 228 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
640 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-57131-169-6 (9781571311696)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
06/2026
Milkweed Editions
€12.49
Available for download
Person
Gary Paul Nabhan is a celebrated ethnobotanist and biocultural conservationist whose groundbreaking work has advanced ecological restoration, pollinator recovery, and Indigenous food revitalization. A MacArthur "Genius" Fellow, John Burroughs Medal recipient, and James Beard Award winner, he has been recognized nationally for his contributions to both conservation and food culture. He lives in Patagonia, Arizona, where he continues to work at the intersection of ecology and community.