When it rains in Lubbock, Texas, I open the doors and stand gaping. The dust settles, the cracked brown earth drinks, and my nostrils flare, breathing in relief. On the arid Llano Estacado, every drop of water is a gift. I grew up amongst dust, sheltered by thick adobe walls in Corrales, New Mexico. My playground was a field of tumbleweeds that reached well over my head, where my brother and I crawled through the pathways trod by dogs. We climbed into the dry acequias to gather sand for luminarias each Christmas. The afternoon monsoons that once drove us inside became increasingly less reliable, and as a result more awe-inspiring, when they did pour over the land. We understood that the water that nourished the carrots pulled from my mother's garden was limited, and therefore precious.

We knew to never leave a faucet running. The impacts of our hot, dry environment on the human body became clear to me at an early age, when I watched a neighbor collapse from heatstroke. I remember feeling astounded, wide-eyed before my first flashing ambulance, as I grasped how the heat and lack of water brought a grown man to his knees. I open this collection with love for this landscape and respect for the role that water plays as a primary protagonist in its story. As a means of introduction, I first illustrate the landscape and unique water features of the Llano Estacado. I then contextualize the dire implications of the region's aquifer depletion. I argue that while they acknowledge the severity of this reality, the contributors to this book move beyond a discourse of crisis to ignite a sense of water wonder. By relating to water on the Llano Estacado with curiosity and attentiveness, the authors awaken readers to the richness of this region, asserting the importance of attending to the particularities of place on a local scale.

Grasping the distinct value of the Llano and the critical role of water in maintaining life here generates a process of mourning that exists alongside wonder, upon apprehending the grim future of the region's diminishing water resources. This book offers both celebration and elegy, showcasing a wide range of frameworks for valuing and categorizing water. I maintain that the endless mutability of water demands a multiplicity of approaches. This collection, organized into the sections of "Science and Water Law," "Archaeology and History," "Life Writing," and "Music and the Visual Arts," approaches the study of water on the Llano Estacado through a crucial interdisciplinarity, inviting readers into a mosaic of accessible methodological tools. This collection emerges amid a wave of increased cultural and scholarly production on water. We situate the volume within the growing field of Water Studies, adding to the foundations established by works such as Hydrohumanities: Water Discourse and Environmental Futures (2022), which identifies a new twenty-first century discourse on water-human power relations that is interdisciplinary but relies on the humanities. Blue Humanities: Storied Waterscapes in the Anthropocene (2023) similarly works across disciplines to challenge the centrality of human discourses about water ecologies, while Hydrocriticism and Colonialism in Latin America (2022) examines the impact of bodies of water in processes of colonialism, slavery, migration, and imperialism. Like these works, Water on the Llano Estacado establishes the crucial, multifaceted lens of Water Studies, enabling us to understand what water can teach us about history, culture, society, and the earth.

--from the preface.