The Oasis Effect

Small Wonders

For the final episode of season one, Laurel Moffatt drinks in the wonders of water in Zion National Park.

The relentless river that flows through the park's centre has carved out a canyon of incredible beauty. But water can have sustaining as well as destructive effects.

Laurel investigates the living water that makes an oasis flourish in the midst of heat that bakes the life from the surrounding landscape.

Then she asks, what would it be like to have water like that inside of us, as we confront the sort of hard times that threaten to shrivel us to a husk?

LINKS

Christina Rossetti's A Better Resurrection
I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb'd too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm'd with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.
My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.
My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perish'd thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

Liu, Rui, et al. Investigating microclimate effects in an oasis-desert interaction zone, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 290 (2020): 107992

Living Water from the Zogoria province in Albania.