This Must Be What They Were Going For

When I was a young and energetic twenty-something, I spent several summers guiding whitewater rafts on overnight trips through a river canyon all set about with dogwoods and cottonwillows. This Elephant's Child was not a drinker, but some of my fellow river guides were known to down a few beers on occasion. On nights we weren't working, we all bunked down in "the guide house", a non-descript little house in town. This house had a gravel garden up front (in which some neighborhood boys cleverly dug a hole and buried my solar-powered battery charger). Out back, it had a brown lawn. On a hot summer evening after downing a few of the aforementioned beverages, some of my fellow guides would make a quick trip out back "to water the lawn". For some reason, the lawn never turned green, but apparently, beer does work for this purpose.