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Violence was on my mind when I went to see palaeoecologist Paul Martin at the University of Arizona’s Desert Lab in Tucson. The night before, my first night in town, I had stopped at a convenience store to make a phone call. A teenage boy grabbed my purse. We scuffled, he ran, and I was on the ground, my wallet still gripped under my arm, my legs waving feebly. I felt like an overturned potato bug.

For most American women, the question of where to have their first child is easily answered. Either they would never dream of having it in a hospital or they would never dream of not. For these women, there is no decision to make, no research, no late-night reversals. Intuitively they have determined the relationship between birth and technology. Most accept pregnancy as a medical “event,” belonging to the realm of doctors, pharmacology, and electronic equipment. A few reject that model as undesirable and unsafe. Right or wrong, pro-homebirth or pro-hospital, these women feel secure. They have made their judgment.

THREE YEARS BEFORE my husband and I bought land on the Mimbres River, an unusual amount of winter snow and spring rain prompted what locals authoritatively called a “hundred-year flood.” That left us ninety-seven years. We were also reassured by the large dikes built by the Army Corps of Engineers between our agricultural field and the river-bed. These dense gray mounds of gravel, contained improbably with heavy mesh wire, were ten feet high, twelve feet at the base, and ugly. They efficiently blocked our view of the river which, at that time, was not much of a loss. Although things were to change quickly, when we came to southwestern New Mexico the price of copper stood high, unemployment was low, and–on our land–the Mimbres River stretched bone-dry.