Too thick to drink, to thin to plow

This is the description of the rivers in Northern Arizona, "Too thick to drink, too thin to plow." This shot of the Rio Puerco in the Petrified Forest National Park is a good example. When the pioneers, such as my Great-grandparents" arrived in this area, they had to drink the water from the rivers. They would pour the water into barrels and let it settle for a day and then skim off the top water to avoid having so much mud and silt in their drinking water. The women complained that all of the clothes washed in the river water turned mud red. It was a hard life. When I was young, we got all of our water from the Little Colorado River of which the Rio Puerco is a tributary. When we would freeze ice cubes, they would come out striped, clear on top, red on the bottom.