You know that physical feeling you get when Something Is Wrong?

On the late July day when we arrived in Asheville, it rained briefly (and not hard). It hasn’t rained much at all since. Walking my dog in the southern heat, I tend to encourage her over to the grass shoulder, wanting it to be gentler on her fleshy pads. She knows what I don’t until I walk on the grass–that even the green blades are brittle and sharp. A farmer I met in Kentucky certifies that the weather has changed in just the 30 years his family has been on their property.

Last summer’s drought in northern Georgia wasn’t helped by the overselling of water from the Chattahoochee River and Lake Lanier reservoir. But the drought wasn’t caused by it either.

When I left the midwest, there were still fields feet deep in standing water. Everywhere, there’s too much and too little. Seems many difficult situations come not from an overall lack, but from a painful imbalance in the distribution.