Letters to My Daughter: The First Rain

 

Dear Daughter,

Today, the sky remembered us.

I was shaping the last garden bed when the clouds opened. Not in fury, not in flood—just a steady, knowing rain. I stopped. I watched. The paths I carved with my hands, the wells I dug with intention, began to speak. Water flowed—not chaotically, but purposefully—sheeting down into the wash like it had always known the way.

I didn’t plan that. I didn’t engineer it. I just listened. And the land responded.

Let me tell you about those wells.

We made them in the bee yard, where the soil is quiet and the creosote waits. We dug shallow basins—wide enough to catch rain, deep enough to slow it. We shaped them like bowls, not pits. We placed them near native plants that looked thirsty, stressed, or leggy. No machines. Just a shovel, our hands, and a sense of where the water wanted to go.

We didn’t do it to control the land. We did it to invite the land to heal.

These wells are passive water catchments. They mimic what arroyos and animal trails do naturally—hold water just long enough for the roots to drink. They’re simple, but they change everything. After the rain, the creosote bloomed. Green growth surged. Buds appeared. It was like the plant had been waiting for us to remember how to help.

And you helped.

I watched you gather any stone you could find—smooth ones, jagged ones, even a few that looked like broken pottery—and place them gently around the edges of the wells. You didn’t ask. You just knew. You made borders, offerings, tiny altars to hold the water in place. I saw you crouch low, hands dusty, eyes focused, arranging each stone with care. It was your way of saying, this matters.

This is what I want you to know: sometimes we shape the earth, and sometimes it shapes us. Sometimes we act, and sometimes we witness. And sometimes, when we’re lucky, we get to do both.

I saw a creosote bloom today—new buds after pruning, green growth after drought. I disturbed a scorpion. I cleared a packrat mound. I made choices. Not all of them perfect. But all of them present.

You will make choices too. Some will feel selfish. Some will feel sacred. Most will be both. That’s okay. What matters is that you ask the question: Is this in service of life?

If you ask, the land will answer.

Lesson for you, my daughter: Stewardship doesn’t always look like strategy. Sometimes it looks like a child placing stones around a well. Let your instincts guide you. Let your hands speak. Even the smallest gesture—if made with care—can become a ceremony. The land remembers.

Love, 

Your Mother 

The Desert Druid