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Musings on The Confluence of life & Water
Erstwhile’s Sara Porterfield reflects on a summer spent researching the rivers she knows well and the valuable role personal experience plays in academic study.
As I was working on a draft of my dissertation’s introduction a couple months ago, I decided that I HAD to know what percentage of the Colorado River Basin lies in Mexico. This factoid would have taken up half of a sentence and wasn’t necessary to my argument or larger purpose, but I was probably subconsciously (ok, consciously) looking for a way to procrastinate tackling the larger issues of the introduction, like formulating my argument.
I founded Tributaries because I see a need in the water community for a historical perspective, for well-researched and well-written history that doesn’t fall back on old tropes and tired narratives. This kind of history has the power to change the way we see the world around us. It can help us more fully understand how we got to where we are today and help shift how we think about solutions and decision making going forward.