In the 1970s, travel writer and poet Gretel Ehrlich spent several years living in rural Wyoming following the death of the man she loved. Drawn to the rugged landscape and its equally resilient people, she compiled the essay collection “The Solace of Open Spaces” about her time there. “I came here four years ago,” she wrote. “I had not planned to stay, but I couldn’t make myself leave.” In this quote from her essay “On Water,” Ehrlich contemplates the ebbs and flows of nature and the capriciousness of life. Comparing the human experience to a river that weightlessly carries both death and life, she wrote, “We can drown in it or else stay buoyant, quench our thirst, stay alive.”