One day we drove from here toward northeast Iowa and saw water standing in fields all along the way. A few days later, we were driving all over New Mexico and trying to remember what water looks like.

Way down in Las Cruces, the parched residents had gone 119 days without measurable rainfall. A hotel clerk in nearby El Paso, Texas, claimed that city has been rain-free since last September. It’s never thunder that they hear; it’s always gunfire across the border in Ciudad Juarez.

So if you’re looking for an undemanding career path, you might check into weather forecasting in the desert Southwest.

We thought we had found the world’s easiest job when we went through a highway checkpoint on the way to White Sands National Monument. “Are all of you U.S. citizens?” asked an officer. We stopped loading our AK-47s long enough to say yes, and he waved us through.

Later, we found an even easier assignment. The guy guarding the security of the entire city of Los Alamos sent us rolling past without bothering to say a word. At least, we assumed he was in charge of security; maybe he was just waiting for a pizza delivery.

But weather forecasting in that region just might be the smoothest gig of all. If you can memorize “hot and dry” and pronounce Alamogordo, you’re qualified.

It’s a serious drought, but probably not as rare as a glacier in Dallas County. Whatever rain New Mexico has had in the past century, I’m guessing it wasn’t enough to shrink anything. As we looked at endless miles of rocks and scrub, I wondered: We fought a war to get this? Ammunition must have been extraordinarily cheap back then.

All week, we kept crossing and recrossing the Rio Grande of history and legend. Or, as one sign put it, the “majestic” Rio Grande. “Damp” would be more like it. It’s all about branding, and I think we could get the Des Moines River into a major motion picture if we just worked up some better anecdotes.

And all week we kept encountering water envy. Have you noticed that people have a dismissive attitude when you tell them you’re from Iowa? Go to New Mexico and bask in the reverence, and it’s all because Iowa sounds so squishy.

The people there will say, “Did you bring the rain with you?” or wonder out loud whether a pipeline from here to there would be feasible. I didn’t know they paid so much attention. I thought it took a caucus, or at least a phony-baloney straw poll, to get the nation’s notice.

We didn’t push it, but I think we could have gotten the folks of Santa Fe to swap a couple of celebrity residents for a steady drizzle.

We were the ones who weren’t paying attention; only when we got home did I learn that the Missouri River, always jealous of the Mississippi, was making its move. Gov. Terry Branstad was issuing disaster proclamations and making personal visits to Western Iowa, all the while wondering how he ever managed to endure the pedestrian life of a college president.

Iowa Insurance Commissioner Susan Voss was hosting a flood awareness meeting, which I believe is like an estate planning seminar except that the complimentary tote bags are filled with sand.

After leaving the dust devils of southern New Mexico and flying over the moonscape of West Texas (tell me again; what is it that Texans are so arrogant about?) and the dry riverbeds of Oklahoma, it was like sipping a cool drink just to see how green it is in Central Iowa.

As we drove home, we saw Canada geese paddling about in a spot that’s supposed to be part of a soybean field. Not majestic, exactly, but a reassuring kind of soggy.

Jim Pollock is the managing editor of the Des Moines Business Record. He can be reached by email at jimpollock@bpcdm.com