Hi everyone. I'm Josh, and this is The Emerald,

currents and trends through a mythic lens.

The podcast where we explore an ever-changing world and our lives in it

through the lens of myth, story, and imagination.

The Emerald.

All that's happening on this green jewel in space. It's October, and I'm walking alone in the Utah desert, following a little X on a map.

It's dry. I mean, it's really dry. I'm in a canyon of yellow sandstone peppered with pebbles and

sand and scrub. The scrub is covered in thorns. There's life in that life in the desert kind of way,

but it's fleeting, sparse. The late afternoon sun brings a blinding white glare.

Did I mention how dry it is?

And who even knows if this X leads anywhere anymore?

It's an old map, and I've followed similar X's before and not found anything at all.

It's hot, and I'm thirsty. What is it that Emily Dickinson said?

Water is taught by thirst. I cross a sandy arroyo into an even narrower canyon, dry as bone.

I'm about to give up and turn around and get out of this arena of sand and rock. And then high up above, I see something.

At one place the canyon wall curves into a crescent moon of sandstone. And this one place, against all odds, in that desert, is growing with vibrant green ferns and grasses, teeming with life.

All around as far as can be seen is dry, barren rock, and here, appearing from that bare rock

is life. It takes quite a scramble to get up there. I climb the slope of grasses and ferns

and thorns to reach the source,

and the air is suddenly cool and moist in the shade of the wall, and then I hear a sound,

and it sounds unexpectedly, gloriously, like this.

Okay. like this. Like rain on a bone-dry day in a bone-dry desert.

...