Photos of the Month: September 2022

Anhydrobiosis & the phenomenon of water & life

There were two contending photos for this month’s photo of the month, and both had an equal amount of votes. I think it’s fitting that both images have water in them, in one form or another. Water is an integral, amazing force of nature, and I believe that we should appreciate it more than we do. Rivers, lakes, glaciers, streams, oceans, rain – all do so much more than we likely realize or think about.

Reading Craig Childs’ The Secret Knowledge of Water was as astonishing as much as it was a revelation. In it, he writes of finding water sources in canyons and deserts, following trails more of intuition than logic, adventuring in lands where you can die of thirst or drowning (so Childs says). It’s a fascinating book, and while I read it I felt I discovered something new every other page.

In his chapter “Water That Waits”, Childs writes of the phenomenon of anhydrobiosis. Taken literally, the term means “life without water”. Because of deserts’ long dry periods, some organisms have adapted to enter a death-like state until water appears again. “Basically, they die, but with the loophole of being able to come back to life,” writes Childs.

Not only did this seem mind-blowing to me, but it also evolved my concept of water and life into something much more complex and layered. Organisms that are anhydrobiotic, like Triops, some shrimp, and worms, “[bypass] all accepted notions of life”, Childs says. He writes of the process of anhydrobiosis in detail: “Anhydrobiosis is dehydrated life – life shrunk down to its most primary aspects. No energy is spent on what would normally be considered to be living. The participants become sealed containers against the world, cells turning from living structures into reinforcement material. Sensitive organs are tucked away into specialized membranes, like wine glasses wrapped in newspaper for a move… The organisms insides become crystalline, a material very similar to the liquid crystal in digital watches.”

Before, I had thought that most, if not all, organisms on Earth needed water to live at all times. And though that theory is still technically correct, the fact that anhydrobiosis exists perfectly for desert life to use just reinforces the notion that everything happens for a reason and nothing is unintentional in life. I am a strong believer of that.

Another mind-boggling fact that Childs writes about is the concept of time with anhydrobiotic organisms. “If an anhydrobiotic organism regularly lasts for three weeks from egg to death, it does not matter if one hundred years of drought are placed in the middle of the life cycle. It will still live for three weeks, the extra hundred years being nothing but a pause on the biological clock.”

All of this is to share how awed I am at the phenomenon of life, death, and water. Our lives are so intricately connected – much like the spider’s web in the second photo of the month – to what we need to survive, and nature works in many mysterious ways to ensure the continuation of life. The glacier in the first photo represents the cyclical aspect of nature and how we’ll never really be able to fathom time living amongst ancient giants like them.

This blog is for water, and for the miracle of life. Tenacity, resilience, strength, solidarity, mystery, renewal – these are the aspects of water that I think we should celebrate. I’m grateful for this elemental part of our world.