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.

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.

Another Road, Another Wash

A road branches to the west from the ranch road just below my fence. It was always there in some form, but some years ago some trucks came through and made it more obvious.

At the time someone told me the Indians did it to get back to some clay deposits they needed for their pottery. The person who told me was simply passing on something he’d heard. However, it sounded like one of those things you’re told by people who are aware others exist in the universe who live differently than they, but don’t actually know any of them and so attribute everything to them in an almost conspiratorial fashion to establish they really do know what’s going on.

Another possibility was that some utility had to get back.

The one thing it wasn’t was an enlightened county project to build a recreation trail. However, that’s how it’s been used since by those who walk their dogs or their hearts. The trucks haven’t been back, but it’s been kept open by ATV’s.

It never seemed particularly interesting to me, because I’d already learned few wild flowers grew with the prairie grasses. The far arroyo was more rewarding.

Yesterday was the first time I walked farther than the junipers.

A wash opened on the right that wasn’t connected to the one that had backed up from the acequia drop. The ranch road goes between the two with no sign it’s been filled. Still this wash looked like it might be part of the same weak area.

The banks were steep and maybe 8' high with isolated tongues of soil in the center. It went back as far as a fence and stopped, for no apparent reason.

I didn’t go in to explore. That was the adventure for another day. Today I wanted to know where the road went.

The fence wire had been removed between three posts for the road, which continued to climb toward a row of utility poles. It got to them, and continued to the left, which would be north. So much for that theory.

It rose to a crest, then dropped into a wash, this one the upstream section of the one by the cone I call the barbarian’s wash for reasons best left to the imagination. It had the same characteristics as the one to the south, steep banks and chiseled islands.

There were no signs anyone had mined the area, only that ATV’s had been through on their way north along the front of the tertiary uplands. So much for the theory it led to a special deposit of clay. It was simply a trail.

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.

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.