Rain Walks
Since Alysia and I left the Farm School, we have moved four times. Every time, I found open areas nearby where I could continue my rain walks.[1] I have been going on rain walks now for more than 35 years. Why does a 72-year-old man go walking out like King Lear into tempests?
I do it for many reasons. One is because I feel electrically alive and full of adventure when I set forth in my boots, long johns, wool shirt, fleece jacket, wool cap, rain coat, rain pants and trusty trowel, out into 40 mph gusts, out there all alone because nobody else is crazy enough to be out here in this wild, exuberant flowing of energy. Sometimes I simply sit on a rock and revel in just being out in it: the wind, the cloud light, the 3D immersion in the sound of the rain, and the land glowing with so many hues of rain-washed green.
A second reason for this work is play. Before winter’s rainy season, for example, I go clean out my chevrons. Chevrons are V’s of divergence channels that spread the gathering runoff back out over a slope, usually leading more of the runoff around the head of a gully. That way, less runoff can concentrate erosive energy into the head of the gully. Because these divergences lead the runoff onto a slower path, they gradually silt up during the rainy season. Grasses then grow in this silt, clogging the divergence so less water can flow along it the next rainy season. Therefore I go out in October and clean them out.
Blue is the natural path of runoff. The chevrons route much of the runoff around the plunge at the head of the gully downslope.
[1] All my rain walks have been in regions where low rainfall is a limiting factor for life. Rain walks in areas where rainfall is not a limiting factor might have negligible effects and so might not be as much fun.
I am down on my knees pushing and wriggling the sharp cleaving edge of my trowel through the thick grass. Sometimes the grass is so thick, I can’t see my divergence. I trust the trowel’s tip to feel its way along the divergence like a train being guided by the tracks. I am once again the little boy kneeling on the floor running my wooden train along the wooden railroad track layout I created. And when the rains come, then my trowel builds “switches” to lead the runoff off the drainage’s main line onto sidings.
A third reason for rain walks is the opportunity to practice an “elves coming at night to help the poor shoemaker” relationship with the world. When I walk over the land in the spring and watch plants growing more abundantly where I have made my plays, I feel the blessings of seva, selfless service to the whole. Whatever blessings I receive are not only from the fun of the work itself but also from the unknown opportunities my work creates for others. Part of this blessing lies in the experience of being part of the Upward Spiral that for hundreds of millions of years has been bringing new possibilities into existence.
But the main reason I go on rain walks is to immerse myself within the details of a world flowing with information. Patterns and flows are so obvious in the rain that the world gives me, more deeply than at any other time, allegorical access into my koan (“How do we live within a universe shaped by the Second Law where up only happens through a greater down?”). The fields are a big, play-upon model for (1) developing insights about how the world works and (2) techniques for changing rates of flow so that Relative Balances shift in a way that more Possibilities can accumulate.
A simple play I’ve made hundreds of times exemplifies “every play is two plays.” High in the drainage, as runoff increases, the rising runoff begins overflowing its shallow channels, spreading out into easily overlooked overflow routes. Sometimes a rock lies in the overflow channel, obstructing how much of the runoff can flow that way. I lift the rock out of the channel so that more of the runoff can flow in this new direction (Play One). I then place that rock in the main channel so that it shunts more of the runoff towards the overflow channel (Play Two).
This simple moving of the rock is two plays. The broader, slower overflow route receives more runoff because of the removal of the rock, and the deeper main channel receives less because of the new placement of that rock. Though much of the water still flows down the main channel, more is now flowing along the broader, slower overflow route. I can see this because rising water has a distinctive appearance. Surface tension holds the water’s surface against plant stems and rock edges so that this ring of contact lags behind the rising level of the surrounding water. This creates a dimpled surface around each stem and rock sticking up out of the water. These dimpled surfaces sparkle with focused light. I can watch this dance of light advance with the increased flow down the overflow route.
Grass stems in water. Left picture is water rising higher. Right picture is water receding lower.
If I look back at the former main channel, I see the water clinging to the stems, the sign of ebbing water as the now-reduced inflow can’t balance the outflow of runoff from that channel. The Upper Level expression diminishes until a more humble volume of water flows thinner and slower. I can watch this rising along the overflow channel and the thinning along the main channel.
I have changed the distribution of the flow. I can predict with mathematical certainty, and then confirm visually, the changes happening downslope because of my change. The predictability of the runoff’s resulting flow reminds me of the science museum exhibits I saw as a child in which hundreds of balls cascade down through a broadening series of pegs. (These exhibits are called Galton machines; you can see many working examples of them on the internet.) At each peg, a ball has a 50-50 chance of bouncing to the left or to the right. There is no way to predict the path of any specific ball down through the series of pegs. But probability correctly predicts the distribution pattern that will form as they reach the bottom. Time after time, the balls pile up into a bell-shaped curve. Most of the balls will be in the middle with the distribution thinning out to either side.
High in the hills, runoff flows broadly and slowly through a great obstacle course of grass stem “pegs”. Each stem splits the runoff. Each molecule of water must go either to the right or left around each stem. But there is stem after stem, a million times long. Because of the drainage pattern worn into the land, the broad runoff will converge towards the main drainage, but the thousands of resistant grass stems keep splitting it, spreading it out. Eventually most of it will gather within the channel, like the center of the bell-shaped curve, but some of it will move way out to the side – a place it would not have reached before grass covered that slope.
Like a single grass stem within the flow, many of my individual plays of shifting a rock’s position appear inconsequential. None of them creates a 100% change in a flow, and the flows they do shift are only a small part of the runoff on that slope. I can’t predict which molecule of water will go which way. I’ve just shifted the probability of where they will end up. But I do know with mathematical certainty that the probabilistic effect of these changes will be more of the runoff flowing broader and slower, in the same way a casino knows that setting the odds in its favor will lead to money accumulating for the House, despite occasional big winners.
As my probabilistic shifts accumulate downstream, the surge of runoff is both reduced in mass (because more is absorbed by a broader surface area of soil) and slowed in velocity (because of the thinning of the spread-out flow and the resistance created by more grass stems). As the surge slows and spreads out through time, the erosive energy subsides with mathematical certainty, since erosive energy is proportional to both the amount of runoff flowing and the square of its velocity. Less soil moves downslope. Balances shift and soil and life can accumulate where they might not have before. The fields respond with thicker green carpets of grass and spring flowers. As this happens, the thicker green carpets create easier opportunities for new plays. The work grows on itself.
Probabilistic shifts free me from the deadening internal censorship of “But is it significant?” The world is invitingly full of opportunities for making little shifts that will create some change in flow downstream. I never know what’s going to grow from them, so I enjoy making them for the simple pleasure of seeing an opportunity and doing something about it.
A lot of my rain walks are spent replicating in new areas the same basic plays I’ve been doing for decades. But every now and then, some new insight or strategy emerges. Here is one from January, 2017. The setting is oak savanna public land. Because the bedrock of lava lies close to the surface, the area is much rockier than any place I’ve worked before.
A culvert (indicated by the light gray line) crosses beneath this old abandoned ranch road. The main water flow off the land is the dark blue line flowing downslope from right, through the culvert, and on towards the left. The road acts as a berm and so collects the runoff (light blue) coming down off the slopes on the right. The right-hand (upslope) side of the road acts like a gutter, gathering this runoff into a single stream and leading it toward the upstream side of the culvert. The bottom of the culvert is four feet below the road, so near the end, the road “gutter” rushes down to the culvert via a steep, narrow, eroding channel.
On one very wet rain walk, the runoff was so heavy that in the low area before the culvert, the “gutter” had swelled beyond its sides, forming a shallow pool that almost extended across the road.
on the previous photo to show where the pool was
It would be great if I could offer a path across the road for some of this water, because all the “gutter” water was dropping down into the culvert’s gully. The culvert concentrated all that runoff into a narrow flow that had eroded a foot-deep gully downstream of the culvert in what I hypothesized had been a lovely, broad, grassy swale before the road was built. If I could create a channel that would lead some of that pooled-up runoff across the road, then that water would have a much gentler, broader, slower flow down through thick grass for about fifty feet before it would converge with the water that had come through the culvert. That would deprive the culvert runoff of some of its erosive power and allow the road-crossing runoff to soak in and nourish some of that grassy slope. (Every play is two plays.) Unfortunately, I couldn’t do it; the road base was rock hard.
The next rain walk did not have such heavy runoff, so though the pool formed again, the water level was an inch too low to flow across that road. Then I realized that though the intensity of the rain determined the rate of inflow to that pool, I could influence the rate of its outflow. I found three large (double-fist sized) rocks and followed the pool downstream along the “gutter” looking for the first place where ripples appeared on the surface. The ripples reveal where the very low-speed flow within the broad pool starts accelerating out of the pool. It accelerates because beneath the ripple is the high point in the channel bottom. The flow backs up behind the high point until it overflows. Once it overflows, it accelerates down past the high point. This reveals the exact place where a dam would have the greatest effect on backing up the pool’s water level.
I placed the rocks there, right in the center of the “gutter” channel. That reduced the rate of outflow from the pool. Outflow was less than inflow so the Upper Level expression of that flow accumulated. The water backed up. As it rose, more of the runoff could flow around my three rocks. But as long as the outflow remained less than the inflow, the water level kept rising. Because water seeks its own level, the entire surface of that pool also had to rise. As it did, the surface of the pool rose above the divide in the road and some water started oozing across the road.
My experiences with check dams had been that runoff backed up until it overflowed the dam so that all the check dam really accomplished was concentrating a large portion of the water’s energy into a high-energy drop that eventually undermined the dam. Would that happen to my three-rock dam in the “gutter?” When I examined the dam, the water was, indeed, now flowing between the rocks with more force, like water in a garden hose when you cover the end with your thumb. I found smaller, fist-sized rocks and placed them in the few spots where the water was pushing through the strongest. This backed up the water level even more, increasing the rate at which the water within the pool flowed across the road on the new path instead of following the “gutter’s” old path to the culvert. The more rocks placed in the dam, the stronger it became. Not just because there were more rocks but because more of the runoff was being diverted over the road instead. This also meant that I did not need heavy runoff to raise the level of the pool; with the dam decreasing outflow, only moderate inflow was needed to re-route some of the runoff across the road.
A delightful game developed. I would look for loose rocks upon the roadway as I approached this area. When I reached the dam, I would look at how the backed-up, pressurized water flowed through the assembly of rocks. What was the three-dimensional shape of the gap where the water forced through the hardest? Then, which of my rocks would fit best into it? I would often try seven or eight orientations of a rock before I found a best fit. During this process, the generic rocks morphed into individuals worthy of the more graceful name, “stones,” and the dam grew into a stonework. It became very beautiful because each stone was placed in response to the water. The rocks smoothed the water into a uniform, laminar flow and this flow directed the placement of stones into a long, low, smooth shape rather than a narrow, tall shape. What I came to call a Porous Stone Dam had no turbulence at its base.
Water flowing from right to left.
Dam began on the right and grew downstream to the left.
I learned several lessons from this. The first is discovering that from a feedback spiral between flowing water and mindfully-placed stones, a beautifully-shaped structure can emerge that derives its strength from its harmonious relationship with the water. The fact that a few months later, it looked like this reveals that life likes it, too.
I continued a series of smaller Porous Stone Dams down along the sharply-dropping channel between this dam and the culvert gully, and within a half year, the bare, eroding channel was filling with grass.
The second lesson I learned is that there is a place in my work for dams. My fear (from my experience at Kiet Siel) that the water rising up behind the dam would concentrate its power on blasting out the dam faded, because now the dams were being placed where they backed up the water level high enough to lift much of the runoff onto a previously inaccessible, higher, broader route that flowed slower and nourished more possibilities. Previously, all the water had flowed through the gully downstream of the culvert. (Arrow on right-hand side of picture below.) Now, much of the runoff oozes over the road and flows across that grassy slope instead, going around part of the gully system. Less runoff fills the swale’s gully.
The third lesson is that the two parts of a play don’t have to be as close together as I had assumed for years. Sixty feet of backed-up water stretches between my stone dam and where that backed-up water begins flowing across the road. Realizing that the two plays, (1) dam backing up runoff in the “gutter” and (2) pool overflowing the berm of the road, can be dramatically far apart opened my eyes to several more Porous Stone Dam plays.
A fourth lesson from my first Porous Stone Dam came from my surprise and delight when I discovered that, over the following summer, a gopher completely filled in a section of the swale’s gully downstream of the culvert.
Gophers dig an extensive tunnel system. Just like in the prisoner-of-war escape movies, one of the problems of digging a tunnel is getting rid of the excavated dirt. Gopher mounds are the gopher’s way of doing this. The gopher angles a short spur tunnel up to the surface. It then uses the opening to push dirt out.
It can usually push five or six loads fanned out from the hole before the growing mound of dirt gets in the way of pushing more dirt out. The gopher then uses the next load to plug up that side tunnel and goes on to create a new spur tunnel further along for the next loads of dirt.
Imagine now that the gopher’s tunnel pops out on the side of a stream channel that is perhaps 9” deep and 18” wide. This is a gopher dump dream. It doesn’t have to push the dirt up an angle; instead, the dirt can just be pushed out straight ahead. And the dirt doesn’t mound up in front of the exit hole. Instead it drops down into the channel. Many cubic feet of dirt can be spread out from that hole before the rising pile begins getting in the way. Then the gopher can dig a tunnel through the pile, along with side tunnels to dump dirt on the upstream and downstream sides of this pile of dirt so that it fills more of the length of the channel. Also, by filling in the channel, the gopher can move from one side of the channel to the other through tunnels rather than having to surface into the world of hawks, owls, and coyotes.
I hypothesize that my rerouting of the winter’s runoff fueled extensive underground growth of root systems, attracting the gopher in the first place. I’ve always assumed that my plays would reduce erosion, but I assumed that the deposition process of filling in a healing channel would require many years. Then a gopher does something amazing and I’m left not knowing just how fast healing can take place. This is an example of “Start the work. Don’t let your current level of understanding block your actions. As allies emerge, more will become possible.”
These Porous Stone Dams are wonderful examples of something systems thinkers call “leverage points.” A leverage point is a place in a system where a small change can initiate a much larger change. In this case, some stones placed mindfully in a precise point alters the hydrology and shifts the balance of an area from erosion of possibilities to an accumulation of them instead. For years into the future, more will grow here than otherwise would.
Leverage points are an example of the gifts we bring into this world. We have enough consciousness to understand the opportunities that leverage points offer to create long-term changes. I have feet with which to carry stones from one place to another. I have eyes with which to see the first ripples that will guide me precisely to the most powerful location to place the stones. I have hands to pick up and then dexterously orient and place each stone. And then I have language to share this experience with others. A growing understanding of leverage points nourishes hope that we can shift significant relative balances in places we hadn’t realized were shiftable.
My work changes the rates of flows which shift Relative Balances. Upper Level expressions change. I watch to see if this change helps more Possibilities emerge. On rain walks I watch the effects of rain falling on the soil, and later I watch the effects of sunlight falling on the rain-watered plants. More rain soaking into the ground fuels more conversion of sunlight by photosynthesis into surfaces and biological energy that fuels more life and alters future flows of water and sunlight. Everything is flowing, and the flows knit complex patterns of energy throughout the land. On rain walks, I am a young kid playing in the dirt, yet also an old man whose koan search brings him into specific encounters with the natural wisdom within the world.
Beyond the culvert, this abandoned ranch road traverses a broad, rocky slope. Its ruts capture many small drainages coming down the slope and gather their runoff onto the road, where it flows quickly towards the main drainages of the area. I wanted to lead this runoff out of the ruts, back into the grasslands downslope. But the road had been formed by a small grader that scraped the rocks and dirt off the roadway to create a berm defining the downhill side of the road. The backbone of this berm is two- and three-foot boulders that I can’t move. I found one likely spot where I could at least open a very narrow channel between two large boulders, but I couldn’t move the boulders. Ah, but if I had a crowbar.
So I went back another day with a crowbar, knowing that with its help, I would easily pry the smaller of the boulders out of place.
But all the crowbar could do was tilt the rock up an inch. The center of gravity of the boulder was too deep in the saturated clay soil for me to move. No matter what angle or position I tried, the crowbar could only lift it an inch. I had thought it would be so easy with the crowbar, but the crowbar didn’t help.
I har-rumphed around awhile until, eventually, I realized the problem; I was trying to move it with one pry. I gathered smaller stones. I pried up the boulder and slipped one rock under that side. When I released the crowbar, the weight of the boulder settled onto that rock, which prevented it from settling all the way back down.
This allowed me to slide the crowbar a bit further under it. I lifted it again, slid a second rock under the other side, and let the boulder settle down upon these two rocks. Now I could slide the crowbar in further, which allowed me to lift the boulder higher than I had been able to before. I pushed the two rocks in further, preventing the boulder from settling down as much.
I moved around the boulder, prying it up from different angles and slipping small rocks under different sides until the boulder’s center of gravity was above the mire it had laid in. Then, with just my hands, I was able to roll the boulder out of its hole.
This gradual process of “jacking up the boulder” felt like a metaphor for how small changes can accumulate into a large change that was impossible on its own. But it’s deeper than a metaphor. In Bortoft’s words, “In a moment of intuitive perception, the particular instance is seen as a living manifestation of the universal.” That’s what a rain walk feels like: “a living manifestation of the universal.”
Here’s another example. I see many plays when the ground is saturated with runoff. Hundreds of rocks are strewn across the area, available for my work. I want to pick some up to form Porous Stone Dams, but I can’t. They’re sunk into suction-sucking clay mire. Its suction is too strong for me to overcome. But I’ve learned not to try. Instead, I let the suction pull the rock back into position. Again, I pull the rock upwards, feel the suction growing strong, and then I just hold the rock against the suction for several seconds. When I release the rock, it pulls back again into its cavity, but tiny puffs of silt squirt out from the crack between the rock and the grasping clay mire. While I held that rock slightly out of position, groundwater started oozing into the vacuum of the suction. When the released rock is pulled back into the mud, that water is forced out under hydraulic pressure, blasting away the silt I see jetting out from the crack, broadening the space between rock and clay. On the next lift, groundwater can now ooze faster into that enlarged gap between rock and clay. When I allow the rock to pull back into place this time, more silt is forced away from the rock. By the third time, the suction has weakened, allowing me to move the rock further and easily hold it for many seconds. A large volume of water wells out when the gap closes. Usually, by the fourth time, the rock simply rolls out of its hole.
This is a different way of using my power. Rather than trying to overcome the suction by pulling the rock out, I work with water’s nature to flow into the dark, thin spaces between sucking mud and rock. The way the lowly water frees the rock reminds me of the Tao:
The highest goodness is to be like water.
Water benefits
all the Ten Thousand Things,
yet does not compete.
Water will go to the low places
everyone despises
and be content.
This is like Tao.
Tao dwells in low places.
Tao dwells with all people.
The
Book of Tao, #8
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