The Ditch - Arroyo Seco

When I found that main part of the local acequia, I followed the banks a little upstream only to discover it turned toward the badlands that exist by my house.

I looked in the other direction and saw a huge mound of dirt, some 80' high, behind an arroyo bridge.

My mental map was shattered. The ditch was heading south when I believed its source was to the north. I’d gotten that idea from driving though Española.

After you cross the bridge on 84/285 where the Santa Cruz river turns to enter the Rio Grande, you drive three-quarters of a mile along the Rio Grande to reach route 76 that goes to the village of Santa Cruz. From there, it’s more than a mile to McCurdy Road and the church. You don’t actually see the river until you’re on your way to Chimayó.

I always assumed the Santa Cruz river got to the bridge the same way I did.

Suddenly I realized, if the ditch did come from the north, it had to get around that mound and cross an arroyo where there’s no sign of a flume. With everything I believed in disarray, I repeated a mantra from the laws of physics.

Water does not flow uphill.
Water does not fly.
Water does not flow uphill.
Water does not fly.

I couldn’t believe that arroyo near the ditch was the source of the acequia. It’s just too insignificant. It almost never has any water in it, even after a hard rain. The banks are low, the bottom wide. There’s no way it could be feeding the water that carved the high banks of the far arroyo, unless there’s some dam hidden somewhere.

Maps show the red bridge crosses the Arroyo Seco. I never connected the arroyo I cross daily with the Arroyo Seco near the highway to Pojoaque and Santa Fé. Dry Ditch is an even more common name than Black Mesa.

I just assumed the one on 84/285 meandered off west somewhere toward the Rio Grande after it passed under the road at the La Puebla exit. After all, it’s impossible to see north of Boneyard Road, the next road going west. Even when the camera’s zoom lens is pushed beyond its limits, the arroyo is nearly invisible.

Between Boneyard Road and the approach to Española, small, commercial buildings block the view to the west. In that stretch, there can be no arroyo because there is no landscape.

The other arroyo, the one on the side road, has always simply existed as some primordial presence. If I ever thought anything, it was that it formed from drainage from the immediate badlands.

I realized when you’re driving to some destination, the passing landscape is merely a backdrop that’s changed between the different scenes of your life. There’s no continuity in stage setting because there’s no mental connection between where you pass during the week on your way to work and where you go shopping on weekends.

But, of course, continuity exists outside one’s experience, and there is only one Arroyo Seco in this area. The USGS map for the Española quadrangle shows it forms from three intermittent creeks that flow north through those hills to the east of 84/285 north of Pojoaque. Each of those has two branches. There’s also one short tributary coming from the north.

They merge with another arroyo coming from the east into a northwest tracking sand bed.

Soon after, the arroyo goes under the road before the La Puebla exit, parallels 84/285 for a short distance then continues to flow between the badlands and the mound before if somehow intersects the ditch.

It is the same arroyo. There is no secret dam holding back water for the acequia. Its two appearances, on two different roads, create the illusion of bifurcation.

Photographs:
1. Local acequia heading back toward the distinctive badlands formation, 20 January 2012.

2. High mound of Tertiary sediment behind the red side road bridge that crosses Arroyo Seco, 7 February 2012.

3. Arroyo Seco on the other side of the red bridge, 6 February 2012; there is no flume visible.

4. Arroyo Seco disappears before the boundary between private land on Boneyard Road and Santa Clara pueblo land, 7 February 2012. It’s probably that band of sand on the left below the buildings. Color is distorted by the camera’s overextended zoom lens.

5. Arroyo Seco reappears as the sandy streak below the badlands looking west from the 84/285 access road, 7 February 2012. The feeder was probably created by drainage from the highway.

6. Arroyo Seco before the white La Puebla exit bridge, 6 February 2012; highway is on the left.

7. Arroyo Seco downstream from the distinctive badlands formation and before the bridge shown above, 6 February 2012; there is no flume visible.