From one of the world's foremost authorities on the connections between water, landscape, and our changing climate comes an intimate look at what drives one man's obsession with the world's most precious resource.

Robert Sandford has spent a lot time watching and thinking about water. This was not because he was predisposed to do so, but because the importance of water gradually caught up with who he was and what he was doing with his life.

As this self-reflective book demonstrates, when one takes up the serious study of water, one cannot but be surprised at how far that interest can take you: from the very origins of the cosmos right down to the unique structure and remarkable qualities of water as a molecule. It takes you to the depths of the oceans, to the upper reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere, and into the centres of storms. You fall to Earth with raindrops, travel tiny streams and great rivers, go round and round in lakes and ponds. Your study takes you down to the very roots of trees, into the soil, along the dark, dank banks of underground rivers. It takes you from one person’s thirst to the thirst of nations; from the demographics of the past to how those may drastically change in the absence of water in decades to come.

Following water takes one back and forth in time, linking us to what the Earth was like in the past; what it is now; and how water will shape what it will be in the future.

Robert William Sandford is the EPCOR Chair of the Canadian Partnership Initiative in support of the United Nations "Water for Life" Decade and also sits on the Advisory Committee for the prestigious Rosenberg International Forum on Water Policy. He is a director of the Western Watersheds Climate Research Collaborative, an associate of the Centre for Hydrology at the University of Saskatchewan and a fellow of the Biogeoscience Institute at the University of Calgary. As well, he sits on the advisory board of Living Lakes Canada and is co-chair of the Forum for Leadership on Water and a member of the Advisory Panel for the RBC Blue Water Project. In 2011 he was invited to be an advisor on water issues by the InterAction Council, a global public policy think tank composed of more than 20 former national leaders, including Jean Chrétien, Bill Clinton and Vicente Fox.

Robert is the author of some 20 books on the history, heritage and landscape of the Canadian Rockies, including Water, Weather and the Mountain West (RMB, 2007), The Weekender Effect: Hyperdevelopment in Mountain Towns (RMB, 2008), Restoring the Flow: Confronting the World's Water Woes (RMB, 2009), Ethical Water: Learning to Value What Matters Most (RMB, 2011), Cold Matters: The State and Fate of Canada’s Fresh Water (RMB, 2012), Saving Lake Winnipeg (RMB, 2013), Flood Forecast: Climate Risk and Resiliency in Canada (RMB, 2014), and Storm Warning: Water and Climate Security in a Changing World (RMB, 2015). He is also the co-author of The Columbia River Treaty: A Primer (RMB, 2015) and The Climate Nexus: Water, Food, Energy and Biodiversity (RMB, 2015). Robert lives in Canmore, Alberta.

Robert William Sandford's profile page

"In Rain Comin’ Down: Water, Memory, and Identity in a Changed World, Sandford shares a series of meditations on water through lyrical, sometimes humorous, and thought-provoking essays in which topics of literature, religion, mythology, cultural history and science merge like meltwater creeks flowing to form a pulsating river."

Rocky Mountain Outlook

"Alternating between beauty and destruction, Rain Comin' Down is an inspired book." - Alberta Views