Jul 17, 2026 · 35 min · 10 segments
In this week’s Water Matters, John Fleck switches from the host’s chair to the guest’s chair (it’s really the same chair) as co-host Rin Tara sits down with him to talk about the new book he and Bob…
John FleckGuestRin TaraHostFor my quote, because sometimes we pick a quote and sometimes we forget, but today I've picked a quote.
which happens to be quoted in your book, Ribbons of Green, which is why I picked it.
I picked this because, not just because John and I sort of have an ongoing ontological discussion about what a garden is, but because I think it's really relevant to thinking about how the Rio Grande moves through Albuquerque.
So let's step back for a minute, because I think it's interesting to think about why the theme of gardens is in this book.
So the book is Rivens of Green, the Rio Grande, and the Making of Modern Albuquerque, co-written with Bob Behrens, Robert P. Behrens, former director of the Water Resources Program, good friend of the podcast, and Ren and I, the three of us teach a class together each fall for water resources graduate students.
And the book emerged from work that Bob and I have been doing for years, thinking about the institutions, the rules, the systems we build to manage water.
And it started with this idea that was cooking in my mind for a long time in terms of an idea for a book that I wanted to write and really turned into a book Bob and I wanted to write together because we worked together so closely on this stuff about how we write rules to manage water.
And tracing that story through the history of Albuquerque and its relationship with the Rio Grande was just a project we wanted to try to do.
And we were discussing it with Baker Morrow, who is the project editor for the New Century Gardens series, which is a series of books that UNM Press has been publishing.
And Bob and I began thinking about the theme of gardens and this idea of gardening and of tending one's lands, tending the places, the green spaces around us.
And once we had that theme sort of added, layered on top of this institutional ideas that we already thought about, we started seeing the notion of gardens everywhere.
This idea of the middle Rio Grande Valley as a garden spot and people's desires for their future framed in the idea of this sort of lovely garden almost Edenic garden-like place.
And so the garden became this really interesting conceptual framework because it's more than just a result, but it's a set of actions.
It's things you do to make the land around you green and lovely and be the thing you want it to be.
And so that's why gardens ended up being a really important theme of this book, even though we didn't start with it that way.
For my quote, because sometimes we pick a quote and sometimes we forget, but today I've picked a quote.
which happens to be quoted in your book, Ribbons of Green, which is why I picked it.
I picked this because, not just because John and I sort of have an ongoing ontological discussion about what a garden is, but because I think it's really relevant to thinking about how the Rio Grande moves through Albuquerque.
So let's step back for a minute, because I think it's interesting to think about why the theme of gardens is in this book.
So the book is Rivens of Green, the Rio Grande, and the Making of Modern Albuquerque, co-written with Bob Behrens, Robert P. Behrens, former director of the Water Resources Program, good friend of the podcast, and Ren and I, the three of us teach a class together each fall for water resources graduate students.
And the book emerged from work that Bob and I have been doing for years, thinking about the institutions, the rules, the systems we build to manage water.
And it started with this idea that was cooking in my mind for a long time in terms of an idea for a book that I wanted to write and really turned into a book Bob and I wanted to write together because we worked together so closely on this stuff about how we write rules to manage water.
And tracing that story through the history of Albuquerque and its relationship with the Rio Grande was just a project we wanted to try to do.
And we were discussing it with Baker Morrow, who is the project editor for the New Century Gardens series, which is a series of books that UNM Press has been publishing.
And Bob and I began thinking about the theme of gardens and this idea of gardening and of tending one's lands, tending the places, the green spaces around us.
And once we had that theme sort of added, layered on top of this institutional ideas that we already thought about, we started seeing the notion of gardens everywhere.
This idea of the middle Rio Grande Valley as a garden spot and people's desires for their future framed in the idea of this sort of lovely garden almost Edenic garden-like place.
And so the garden became this really interesting conceptual framework because it's more than just a result, but it's a set of actions.
It's things you do to make the land around you green and lovely and be the thing you want it to be.
And so that's why gardens ended up being a really important theme of this book, even though we didn't start with it that way.
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