The Ways of Water

On my way back from the Barrancos I followed the path left by water. This was less a point of curiosity than the easiest way to negotiate broken land. The rivulet began somewhere in the hillocks below the fan before the cliffs.

From there the water wound through low hills.

The water reached more gently sloping ground, where its path was marked by the lack of vegetation. Once in a while, the bottoms was littered with gravel it had recently picked up, but mainly it was a slightly shinier, more level continuation of the banks.

When it reached a more level area where sedimentary gravel covered the ground, it spread wider. Juniper trees grew along both sides.

Below the junipers softer soils appeared. The line was crossed between Tertiary and modern alluvium. Water was no longer able to define a specific course. It spread into a flood plain, leaving areas bare of vegetation. The only clues for where water had flowed were gravel deposits.

The water was flowing generally northeast toward the arroyo when it collided with an ATV trail headed straight for the north end of the cliffs. The water ricocheted back. It was lower than the trail.

From there it ran parallel to the ATV track, preternaturally straight. Its depth varied with soil. When it found something soft, it was deep. One time it was deep, a wash was opening on the other side of the track. At another point the banks were caked with grey mud.

When a particular grass was resistant, it disappeared in the shadows.

When it encountered another channel coming from the southwest, it got lost in another flood plain, until the channel reformed next to the ATV track.

The pattern repeated itself: a straight run, a collision with another water stream, a confused path, rationalization along side the higher road.

Then, a competing channel came through at just a point in the descent where the ATV track was nearly level with my water path. The abutting channel swept across the track, pulling my stream in its wake.

An arroyo feeder formed in the softer soils, twisting and turning around small changes in the earth. Sometimes, one side was steep and the other a delta; it other places the sides were the same. It behaved again like one would expect water to behave.

Just before it reached the arroyo there was a small washout, perhaps formed when water was backup during a storm by stronger currents in the far arroyo.

The feeder entered the far arroyo downstream from where the ATV track began. The water dropped its final load of stones as it changed course when it met the passing waters. From there it flowed towards the Rio Grande.

Valley of the Arroyo

Yesterday I walked to the closest Tertiary formation in the Barracanos badlands. From the base I looked back towards the formations on the other side of the arroyo. A valley I’d never recognized spread out below. The arroyos and washes that dominated when I was in the valley had disappeared.

A few days before I’d walked downstream along the top of the left bank between the ranch road and the area widened by the irrigation ditch. In that small area I could see the level I called the second bottom existed on both sides and appeared to be the same height.

This isn’t a glimpse of the Tertiary past. Rather, this is what remains after waters filled, then retreated, waters that rose to different heights at different times.

Note: Picture 2 is looking down on the second bottom. In picture 3 the bottom continues on the opposite side in the space between the two bare banks.

Ranch Animals

Last week I returned to the washes that lay to the right when I was following the road south of my fence. The thing that originally struck me was that the wash stopped at the fence that marked the boundary with pueblo land.

I couldn’t see how nature would respect mere strings of barbed wire and sapling posts. I supposed it was possible, given the way the land varies, that whoever claimed land out of the pueblo grant followed some natural indicator, say the variety of grass which reflected something about the underlying soil structure, but I really couldn’t credit the idea much.

I turned to follow the fence towards the arroyo and found something strange. Maybe ten feet to the side of the barbed wire boundary was a line of farm fence topped by several lines of barbed wire creating a sort of no-man’s land between. The gully began at the farm fence post.

The lane ended abruptly with a line of barbed wire cutting between the two fences and a wash that made it nearly impossible to walk by. The boundary fence continued to the arroyo; the farm fence stopped. It could have been some kind of animal enclosure, but I couldn’t really see what or why.

Yesterday, I went back to the near arroyo to follow the right bank back to the cactus field. The arroyo maintained its lake like appearance on this side of a barbed wire fence marking the pueblo boundary.

I followed the bank back to its farthest corner where I found the remains of wooden chutes used in some way to corral animals. If the current width is any indication, it was probably sheep rather than cattle.

There had been similar remains on my uphill neighbor’s land and in the barbarian’s wash near the road, but they’ve since been cleared away.

As I looked out over the land, the eroded gullies were, for the most part, limited to the private side of the fence like they were further south.

I now wondered exactly what animals could have done to precipitate the natural forces that were uncovering the older landscape. If the contours existed then, I suppose they would have followed the valleys were grass might be lusher and eaten the ground bare, leaving it open to wind and water.

I suppose it’s also possible that the softer spots in the land caved under their weight, and those low spots became the targets of the weather. Between the gullies, the land remains grassy knolls that hide the open trenches. The steppe scrub that returns with overgrazing appears in limited patches in the washes and nearest the road and ATV trails.

Ranch Road

Yesterday I walked out the ranch road towards the Black Mesa. I went as far as the pueblo boundary where it branches, with one prong going through a gate to the ranch and the other through an arroyo and on toward the mesa.

The road looks and feels like the arroyo bottom, but the neighboring soil is the usual erodible mix of clay and sand. When you get to the Y, the road on pueblo land becomes two tracks of uncovered dirt that would be difficult for a car to negotiate in wet weather.

As I walked back on compacted soil veneered with fine gravel, I wondered if the ranch owners had dredged the bottom of the far arroyo to protect their road, and if others had also done that in the past here and in the other arroyos.

If that were true, I wondered if the arroyo bottom had once been filled with gravel, had been bare like it is now, or had once supported vegetation like the arroyo on pueblo land. I also wondered if their mining had widened or flattened the bottom, or if the general shape had been carved by nature and only slightly been modified by them.

Bottom photograph shows the land to the side of the road, taken when I stopped to take the middle picture of the road where I kicked down to expose the base. Top shows the unimproved road on pueblo land.

Soot

This morning I walked to the far arroyo for the first time since Wednesday’s rain. Everywhere there were signs of the Las Conchas fire.

When I entered below the ranch road I saw black soot laying in water paths left on the bottom.

As I walked up stream I saw the charcoal trails along the low left banks. As I came back down, they were also on the right side, swirling along the base of the high walls.

I could only think it’s a Goldilocks situation. Earlier this summer, when water scoured the bottom of the arroyo, it was passing through so quickly it left little behind. Other times, the rain was so gentle it only moved silt a few feet. The traces of black were slight.

Wednesday it rain most of the day and much of the night, a gentle rain that soaked in. I’m guessing that it washed a layer of sand from the surface of those blocks I noticed earlier where it had accumulated and the soot and sand landed somewhere down stream.

Upstream, there must have been other patches of ash waiting to move. Each time this year when some dark dust moved from higher up the arroyo, it replaced some that had been washed down stream. Perhaps it had slowly become concentrated in areas near the main water paths. Finally, there was enough rain to collect it and move it slowly where it could drop between Wednesday’s showers.

The fire was suddenly visible everywhere again.

The Wash

A bare cone stands back from the road, beckoning you to come discover. It’s sides have already been marred by ATV drivers who took the challenge. Yesterday, I heeded its siren call.

I was coming back from the near arroyo when I thought I spied a path to its base, a sort of gently sloping, lowland route. It had the right come hither look, a promise it wouldn’t be hard on the knees.

I started back. The grass covering disappeared to expose the usual tan sand and clay.

Then the bared ground turned into a dry arroyo, a wash completely hidden from the road.

The wash turned into a maze of washes that might somehow, if I followed the right one, lead me back to the arroyo.

The cone became harder and harder to approach.

I turned and found the wash also connected to one that crosses the county road close to my house. I chickened out and took the low road home.

The Near Arroyo

The near arroyo shows the marks of man even more than the far one.

The road goes over, rather than through it. The local acequia dumps on the river side of the bridge, digging a hole where the water falls. As a result, the one side of the arroyo is more than twice as deep as the other.

Even when it’s not running, the open sections of the ditch that runs back to the Santa Cruz river collect rain water. After Wednesday’s rain, the point where it falls could be seen in the shelf of sand it carved in the bottom.

Three large culverts carry water under the road. They force the water into narrow channels which dig nearly a foot into the soft ground on the upriver side. In the summer, the heat dries the land and the wind smooths the edges, eventually carrying away much of the temporary island.

This arroyo, like the far one, has its sources three or four miles away in the Barrancos badlands that parallel highway 285 that runs from Pojoaque to Española. The rains bring down debris and weeds, especially Russian thistles, that are stopped by the culverts and sometimes block them.

While I think of the arroyo as having two sides, the deep one caused by the acequia and the swallow one carved by the culverts, both acts of man appear on both sides.

Last summer, a lateral was added to the acequia that now dumps just before the bridge on the upstream side. However, with this year’s drought, it hasn’t had a chance to run enough yet to have much impact.

And, on the other side of the bridge, the water leaves the culverts in narrow channels that dig their own paths, especially on the side away from where the acequia dumps. Apparently, the two paths of merge and push the water to the one side.

The erosion caused by the mere existence of the bridge also endangers it. Last year, the local ditch association had to replace the culverts with longer ones and rebuild the concrete faces. At that time, they also added the stone reinforcements.

Note: Top picture is looking towards the badlands on the other side of the Rio Grande and the Jemez. The brown legs in the second and fourth pictures belong to the flume that carries over the ditch water that eventually finds its way to the far arroyo.

Running Water

Another hurricane in the western Caribbean, some more rain this morning.

We’re past the danger point this year, when water is a potential enemy. In late summer, before the first rain after a long drought, you worry the ground has become too hard to absorb water and it will run off the surface. Firefighters were especially concerned about Santa Clara canyon where heat from the Las Conchas fire had baked the soil.

When I first moved here, I could be flooded when water coming off the hill turned into a rolling sheet that gathered force as it moved, fed as it was, every inch, by more rain. Water poured through the joints in my the rail tie retaining wall, until I stuffed broken tiles behind the cracks.

My uphill neighbor had worse problems. He’d built his house in an abandoned road bed which channeled the water his way. A few years ago, he got a backhoe and built a bunker behind his property which diverted the flow of water enough that I was no longer in its path.

At the corner of my property, the paved road makes a sweeping turn. People who live downhill regularly had their garages flooded as water running down the road, swollen by feeds from every driveway uphill, flowed down their drives. One year, a number also had their well houses inundated.

The curve is actually an intersection of three roads - or so the people who numbered the roads believe. The compacted dirt ranch road, which branches from the curve, also collects water from the paved road and sends it along the side of my property.

From there it flows towards the arroyo, collecting water from every break in its banks made by an ATV. This summer I could see where the water had penetrated from the surface, and where it has also been absorbed at the base, with a dry band between the two zones.

The ranch road continues on the other side, which means it feeds water into the arroyo from both sides.

I’m beginning to think one reason the arroyo is as wide as it is in that area is that the load of water has washed away more of the banks downstream. Since the water from the road would turn as soon as possible, it would move along the walls while the water coming from upstream would continue its path somewhere in the center.

Chamisa has taken advantage of the different flow rates to colonize the dryer areas between the banks. This has created the widened arroyo composed of platforms at the edges with some vegetation that drop into obvious water channels that move along two sides of islands anchored by chamisa.

Pictures
1. Ranch road going through the arroyo, 10/20, from top of the left bank; ATV tracks enter the arroyo on both sides of the curving road; my house is the one with the gray-white roof.
2. Water running down hill between dead grasses on the west side of my house to drain into the ranch road, 8/21.
3. Hill behind my uphill neighbor’s house which is elevated on the right by the abandoned road bed marked by the fence posts. The berm runs parallel to the house.
4. Bank of ranch road, 8/2.
5. Arroyo bottom, 9/11, from the platform at the base of the right bank.

Arroyo Walls

Appearances are deceiving.

When you walk through the far arroyo, the walls on the one side are tall and furrowed like the sandstone you see in pictures of Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. On the other side are low, sloping banks.

You assume the first are more substantial than the second. Don’t bet your climbing knees on it.

The surface here is the ungainly named Santa Fe Conglomerate, a lamination of sand, clay, and gravel. If you paw at the sand-clay layers they crumble in your fingers. If you claw at the gravel it stays put until you increase your pressure.

The sculptured surfaces of the tall walls must be the result of constant wind action. When it falls, the rain pocks the skin, leaving small depressions. This year, soot from the Las Conchas fire collected on the ridges between.

The slovenly surfaces of the other result from rain which forms a glaze that resists the wind. When it washes out, however, it disintegrates faster than the clay it lay with. And, apparently when its surfaces can’t produce an adhesive, it leaches and, eventually, brings the clay down with it.

Ditch Head

Today I went searching for the ditch head that feeds into the far arroyo. Head may not be the right word for the boundary between man and nature, but it’s all I can think of for the terminus.

A concrete lined ditch sweeps across the land between the near and far arroyos, going underground where it nears a road.

When it reaches the last piece of land, a neck of concrete, so thin it resembles plaster, channels the water away from the owner’s coyote fence.

It’s path from there is obvious, its course marked this time of year by brilliant leaf colors. There’s a long drop into a dry pool where water collects briefly.

What’s interesting is that after the drop the water’s route is no longer directed by the actions of humans, but follows ancient soil patterns.

The area lies on a long downward slope that angles south and west. The surface is crossed by ridges and valleys going roughly east-west. When nothing has disturbed the land, all’s covered with bunch grass.

When a low place is created in the land, perhaps by a road cut or ATV tires, water has a new path. The softer soils absorb more of the water than the harder ones. They are dissolved from the developing walls, fall into the bottom, and are carried away by wind or water.

The harder soils stay longer, creating what look like eroded craters.

The acequia water, which runs most of the summer, apparently lapped into soft spots of soil along its course that then began washing out. There are two major gullies uphill from the main water path. As they near each other and the main ditch path, they remain separated from each other by harder land.

The harder land looks much like the hard walls in the arroyo, and like those it doesn’t support as much vegetation as the softer soils that are eroding away.

The thing that has always surprised me about this man-made feeder to the arroyo is that it ends so abruptly that it endangers the houses near it. It’s hard to tell without digging before you build if a particular section of land here is on hard ground or soft.

The acequia association probably had no choice. After years of land disputes, and I suspect these particular houses, as well as mine, are sitting on some land grab, the pueblo probably wasn’t interested in making any more of its land attractive to interlopers and simply said no.

Unfortunately, no is not a word water understands.

Pictures top to bottom: 1 - ditch just outside the last fence. 2 - ditch as seen through the last fence. 3 - ditch from bottom looking up at same fence. 4 - land from across the ranch road; the white shed left of center is next to the arroyo terminus. 5 - the current end of one of the wash outs feeding into the ditch path. 6 - two wash outs separated by a spit of land; the cottonwoods to the right mark the main ditch path. 7- wash out between #5 and #6 showing bare hard rock and colonized softer soil.