We’ve had our first two rains, about a week apart with very warm weather in between. Went on my first rain walk of the rainy season on the day after Thanksgiving. All the seeds have sprouted and are growing taller and taller. All the gully bottoms will be well grassed by the time the first gully washer happens. It’s raining again as I write this.
When I go walking in the rain, the world of upward spirals is so real. The shape of the land, the way gopher mounds work, the feel of the softening earth, the smells… It is all so real. I’m aware that the way I place my feet on the slopes of the earth can influence how runoff flows. Every aspect of my living is influencing the world. The visions I pursue are not theoretical, abstract, or idealistic. It’s the way the world is. And how much fun it is to play in the fields! When an area shifts from a downward spiral to an upward spiral, when a bare dirt gully bottom grows full of nitrogen-fixing legumes… Ah, what opportunities for majestic magic we are given with our gift of life.
And now, a few days later, the first large winter rain came in today and I spent all day walking in the fields. This storm fell hard enough to get the drainages beginning to flow. One of the main drainages received just enough runoff to Start flowing. I capitalized “start” to emphasize start. I could follow the “foot” of the stream as it flowed down the gravelly streambed about one foot per minute. Ten yards upstream, the stream is two feet wide and flowing like a regular stream but at the advancing edge, so much of the flowing water is sinking in to saturate the gravels that progress is slow.
This advancing stream came past the junction with a major side drainage I’ve been working within. Previously this side drainage came out of its final gully, flowed across a ten-yard long alluvial fan and over the terrace’s cut bank to drop into the stream. But not today. I’ve turned the foot of this side drainage so that it now flows along the terrace parallel to the stream for a hundred yards before flowing into the stream. That hundred yards absorbed all of today’s runoff – and probably 80% of runoff from the big storms’ still to come. All that rain is now held on the terrace. Without my work, the runoff would have been both eroding the cut bank and helping swell the stream more quickly and pushing more water further downstream faster. I am changing the shape of the land so that more of the water is held higher in the watershed. I like to think that I am helping (along with the grasses and leaves and gophers) the land evolve a more intelligent shape. It’s a dance between the winter rains, the soil, the shape of the land, and life.
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