In an effort to raise awareness about water conservation among visitors to the Land of Enchantment, the Santa Fe Watershed Association and HospitalityGreen have asked me to pen a series of essays about my experiences living off rainwater in the New Mexican desert. Here is my first of four essays, the Weight of Water:

Water weighs 8 pounds per gallon. If that doesn’t sound heavy, you’ve never been hiking in the desert with a day’s worth of drink on your back. I grew up in the Appalachian Mountains, but I didn’t learn the weight of water until I moved to New Mexico, where water is rare and precious and worth its considerable weight in blue gold.

In New Mexico, I lived off the map, caretaking a place in the wide open deserts just south of Santa Fe. This place was more than a house. It was an Earthship: an…