In what was to become my final year at Navajo, my spirit was restless. I still felt in my prime, energetic, wanting to roam and explore but I felt the first faint vibrations of mortality. My somewhat older lady love wanted children and, realizing that I was not going to make that commitment, had detached, setting me adrift. Though I did not yet feel directly touched by time, time was drawing closer. The world around me was beginning to act older and that disturbed things in a quiet but deep way, like mass slumping onto the abyssal plain deep beneath the sea.
I spent an evening with some park service friends. Some late-arriving visitors knocked at their door, asking for information. I reflexively started to answer when I suddenly realized that (a) the questions had not been directed to me and (b) I did not know the answers. I was becoming an information desk creature of reflexive habit. That moment sent me into a place that was not quite a vow of silence but into a long period of reticence to speak unless necessary.
I read about erosion control methods. Inspired, I carried willow cuttings out to Kiet Siel and stuck them into the wet sand. I scattered a bag of cottonwood seeds I had gathered from trees ten miles away. I used some of the spare lumber by the residence to place check dams in a small gully that ran across the terrace towards the edge of the arroyo.
The cuttings died. I saw nothing sprout from the seeds. (If they had sprouted, the cows that roamed in the canyon must have seen their juicy shoots coming up first.) Nothing was working. I had lost my sense of direction. Life was draining away. I felt myself slipping into another depression.
One day, I was back in the library studying because no one had showed up for my 11:00 tour. Michael, who was on front desk, came back and said a school group had shown up late, wanting to do the 11 o’clock tour. Should he tell them they were too late or did I want to give the tour? I could have passed and had three hours free for studying, but I like teaching and walking down to Betatakin, so I happily came out to talk to their leader. She, like most people, did not realize that the Navajo Nation does not go onto Daylight Savings Time, so that her arriving fifty minutes early to have time to get her twelve sixth-grade students fed and ready for going on the tour was actually arriving ten minutes late. I told her that we could start late since no one else had shown up for the tour. She should just relax and concentrate on her students. While she did that, one of the accompanying parents told me about the school – how it was a small university-based lab school that focused on teaching kids to think. He repeated the “teaching kids to think” part so many times that it began sounding a bit precious, but it also presented an opportunity for me to take him up on it. After all, that was the whole thrust of the kind of tour I had developed. So we went on the tour and I did lots of Socratic inquiry with twelve-year olds and the tour went well. Afterwards, the other teacher said that the school had a teaching opening. They were looking for someone who taught like I had on the tour. Because they were part of the university system, a teaching credential was not required. She gave me an address in case I wanted to apply.
The job was in Los Angeles (LA) which was an instant turn-off, but other parts of the possibility intrigued. A different kind of teaching: teaching kids to think in a university environment. A new challenge. This seventh year with the park service was feeling like sinking slowly into routine, no longer growing, no longer shining. My efforts to somehow heal the arroyo had been meaningless. So I applied to that school just to see what might happen. I did an interview over the phone. They offered me the job. It didn’t pay well, but I was used to that. I didn’t really have anything else going on in my life. I could try it out for a year and move on if it didn’t work out. I’m good at explaining things and asking thought-inspiring questions, so I can take the material in a textbook and elevate it into a good discussion. I can do this. So in early August, I accepted. I, who had spent most of my last ten years in the wilderness, would, within the month, descend into LA for a year. I headed out to Kiet Siel for my last ten-day tour.
While out there, I had my third experience (the first two were the rosy finch and the dancer rolling across the floor) of seeing something that, in a moment, profoundly shifted the direction of my life. In the following years, I tried to describe this dramatic experience. So rather than trying to write it again with a memory fogged by 35 years, I open with a many-page excerpt from some earlier writing.
“Normally the bone-dry cliff drawings had no smell. But this summer had been abundantly wet; the damp air released the aroma of smoke from rocks blackened by cook fires 700 years ago. The town smelled freshly abandoned.
“The canyon also appeared fresh because all the cattle had been driven out in July for branding. The storms began shortly thereafter and now quicksand prevented the cattle coming back up the canyon. For more than a month there had been abundant rain and no livestock. Grass and flowers grew thick. Wild roses sprouted from chewed off stalks. I had never seen the canyon more beautiful. How easily it can grow in beauty and possibilities if only the downward spiral of overgrazing and erosion could be reversed….
“After a few days of good weather, a storm came. Waterfalls poured off the cliffs. The stream in the arroyo swelled to a flood. I went out to watch my check dams. Runoff from the waterfall was just beginning to flow across the terrace. The front of that flow encountered my first board, quietly pooled behind it, overflowed, and continued on to the next check dam. I followed the stream as it moved out across the terrace. The stream paused to pool up behind each board. Good, my dams were slowing the runoff. Hopefully water-carried sand would drop out in the slack water behind each dam and fill in the gully.
“Anyone who has washed his car and watched the water flow down the driveway along the street gutter knows that the probing front edge of the water moves slowly along the dry gutter. The water that follows flows deeper and much faster. When I returned to the upper check dams, I found brown torrents plunging over them. The check dams were concentrating the stream’s energy into turbulent plunges that blasted away at the base of each check dam. Within minutes, the dams had washed out.
“Only one check dam held. It happened to be a board that stuck up above the gully. Therefore, most of the runoff flowed around the check dam rather than over it. Also, the slope of the terrace at that point just happened to direct this water away from the gully to new paths on either side. Inadvertently my dam had split the torrent of water into three streams.”
“The change in the flow of water was dramatic. Water within a narrow, smooth gully had encountered very little frictional resistance so its energy went into speed, power, and erosion. But the three channels, two of which were broad, shallow, and filled with cheat grass, possessed far more surface. Overcoming the frictional resistance of that greater surface consumed most of the runoff’s energy. The brown water lost the energy needed to transport sand and dropped its load where the torrent diverged into three slower, gentler streams.” *
*(2018 footnote) The check dam revealed a connection between the equations for stream discharge and kinetic energy. The check dam split one fast, narrow current into two broad side channels plus the original channel (that now had a much lower flow). Together, these three channels still carried the same discharge. But the dramatic increase in combined width of these channels required the depth and velocity to diminish, which they obviously did. However, the formula for kinetic energy is ½mv2. (½ mass times velocity2). The amount of kinetic energy available to the runoff for carrying sand is proportional to the square of the runoff’s velocity; three times the velocity has 3 x 3 or 9 times as much kinetic energy. When the check dam split the current, however, the velocity lowered and the kinetic energy was exponentially diminished. If the velocity dropped in half, the kinetic energy would be only a fourth of what it was. That is why the sand was dropping out where the check dam split the flow. The runoff lost most of its kinetic energy when the channel split.
“The powerful effect of this divergence suggested a strategy. I followed each stream across the terrace, looking for further opportunities to split it. Each stream became two, then four, eight…. Splitting grew easier as the broadening runoff flowed across the level terrace. I simply scratched a V into the sand and a rivulet forked into the two scratch marks. Each split cause the water to flow more slowly, giving time for more of the runoff to soak into the sandy soil.
“The storm ended. None of the runoff had reached the edge of the terrace. All of it had soaked in.
“But the next day the biggest storm I’d ever seen in the canyon hit. On a scale of 1 to 10, the storm was a 10. The lightning was directly overhead. I assumed that the 700 foot cliffs acted as lightning rods so I felt safe. The lightning exploded the air. The banging thunder smashed against the canyon walls and rebounded in vast waves of echoes. These echoes grew fainter as the main blast of thunder bounced up the canyon. And then the series of reverberating booms grew louder. The head of the canyon two miles away had reflected the shockwave of thunder back down canyon. Louder and louder the returning rumbles grew, and a large muffled boom as the energy surged by me, and then receding booms as the main shockwave moved down canyon. About a mile down canyon, the thunder crashed against a sharp turn in the canyon. Much of its energy was reflected back toward me. Again the sound crescendoed as the echo swept past me and then receded up canyon again. Whether that thunder’s rumbling energy would return a third time I do not know, for another lightning bolt sent a fresh wave of sound sloshing back and forth within the vibrating canyon.
“All around me were waterfalls. Not postcard pretty streams of whiteness cascading over the cliffs but brown rivers being flushed down the cliffs. I shouted encouragement to my check dam as I shoveled away the accumulating deposit of sand that was burying the side channels. Then down across the terrace I went, searching for new places to lead the runoff. I felt like an ancient Egyptian leading the Nile flood onto the fields. The runoff, now split into hundreds of tiny streams, advanced only a foot a minute across the terrace. But as the downpour continued, the relentless runoff slowly pushed me closer and closer to the edge of the arroyo. The V’s I drew in the sand were now only a yard from the edge. I had to be careful out there for undermined sections of the terrace were cracking off with muffled ker–whumps and sliding into the flood. Each collapse would partially dam the flood but the brown water swirled the tons of sand away in seconds.
“I gazed down into the massive flood. Slow eddies of brown water swirled off to the side of the main current. I recognized each eddy as a place where, on a sunny non-flood day, a mound of sand rose above the arroyo floor. Now I understood the origin of those mounds of sand. Sand drops out wherever the dirty brown flood is slowed by an eddy.
“I looked up at the cliffs and discovered that the color of the cliffs fit with the patterns of the rain. Parts of the cliffs that were gray green with lichens were damp with rain. Parts of the cliff that had been streaked with black and red mineral stains had water oozing precisely down each streak. If a streak split in two, the ooze of water also did. And cliff sections that had the dusty sandy color of un-weathered sandstone were dry – even in the midst of the storm. That dusty color revealed every overhang in the canyon.
“A massive storm shapes the land more than the many months between storms. All around I could watch the formation of details I had never noticed before. The canyon was awash with patterns that have been invisible in the summer sun. Information and understanding flooded my brain.
“In the midst of this adrenaline rush I realized I was having the time of my life. Interacting with the storm’s intense energy was a blast of fun. Some war veterans have said they felt most alive in the midst of combat. I could understand that now. Unfortunately, war destroys so much. It’s short-term aliveness for the survivors can never balance its long-term destruction and misery. But this moment in the canyon was in the service of life. Rather than battling and destroying other humans I was battling erosion. My rain-drenched body was exerting itself beyond its normal limits. I felt great!
“The sound of rain pummeling the ground slackened. I knew then I had won the battle. I pushed myself to oppose the forward movement of the runoff for a few more minutes. The rain stopped and the only sound was the roar of the waterfalls and the flood in the arroyo. The runoff soaked into the sandy terrace. Within 15 minutes, warm sunlight sent mist rising into the blue sky. The waterfalls gentled into clear water rippling down the cliffs with splashing sounds. Birds sang. The canyon was exquisitely beautiful, more beautiful than any place I had ever seen for I was seeing with eyes of exhilaration. Through divergences I had been able to keep 99% of a massive onslaught of runoff on the terrace. Sand had been deposited on the terrace rather than eroded from it. I had won the battle!
“The next day was sunny. I did some repair work on top of the house. Around 11 o’clock, a small storm came in. I went onto the terrace to do battle but my divergences were already in place and I handled the runoff easily.
“At 2 o’clock another storm arrived – large enough to send me out in the rain, large enough to send another flood down the canyon but easily controllable up on the terrace. The adrenaline rush of yesterday was giving way to the calm of confident competency.
“And then at 4 o’clock the Monster Storm arrived. On the same scale of 1 to 10, the storm was a 20. I sent the runoff into every area I could, but the runoff was pouring over the edge all along the terrace. I stood near the edge of the arroyo and watched a tremendous piece of the terrace slide into the flood. There was no Ker-whump because the raging torrent within the arroyo carried away the earth as fast as it slid in. The whole thing, bushes still binding their chunks of earth together, descended the slope and disappeared.
“After what seemed 45 minutes I heard that magic sound of pounding rain relenting. Thankfully, I redoubled my efforts knowing that soon the runoff would subside. But two minutes later, the full fury of the storm hit. Now the monster storm revealed its full power. Everything intensified. The rain pounded so hard that the sandy soil of the terrace flowed away before my eyes. I found myself crying to the storm to stop, please stop. Rivers a foot deep surged across the terrace. I looked up to see one of my favorite waterfalls and was staggered to see that the entire cliff face, one hundred feet across, was a waterfall.
“There came a time of such sustained intensity that I gave up. I put down my tool and went to see the cliff dwelling. Four massive waterfalls crashed in front of the alcove. A brown cloud of muddy mist veiled the town. The canyon vibrated with pounding waterfalls. The storm pounded humility into my resigned mind. How pretentious were yesterday’s feelings of “winning”. Nature has the power to easily overwhelm and wash away my work.
“I stared across the arroyo at the runoff, which was cascading down the opposite bank. The entire bank was washing away but the areas held together by grass were eroding more slowly than the unprotected bare areas. This slower erosion turned the clumps of grass into high points, which diverged the runoff around them. Many clumps eventually washed down the slope and disappeared in the brown flood below. Yet for as long as each clump of grass remained, it created a divergence, which reduced the energy of the cascade. Even if the grass washed away, it had reduced erosion during the time it stood. If those plants had not been growing on the side of the arroyo, the erosion would have been worse.
“I am like the grass,” I thought. “My efforts prevent the erosion from being worse. Even if the flood washes my efforts away, my resistance will have absorbed some of the flood’s energy and lessened the erosion that would have otherwise happened. Whether my efforts are enough to ‘win’ depends upon the force I oppose. If the force is small enough, I shall ‘win’. If it is large enough, I ‘lose’. To be proud of ‘winning’ is to be proud of encountering a force smaller than myself. I should forget about ‘winning’ and, like the grass, simply resist the erosion.”
“I returned to my work. Twenty minutes later, the pounding rain subsided. So accustomed to that pounding had I become that its slackening sounded like stillness even though the waterfalls still shook the bedrock.
“After the storm, I went up into the cliff dwelling to check the streaks on the alcove’s ceiling. The streaks of mineral stain form an accumulated record of all the storms since this alcove formed; the larger the storm, the farther down each streak the rainwater oozes. The water from this storm extended beyond every single stain line. It had been a once in many centuries storm.
“Seven miles away, park headquarters had a beautiful, blue sky afternoon. Rangers had seen a huge thunderhead out over the canyon, but it had been solitary. All that power had been within a single cloud.”
A week later, I was driving into LA at ten in the morning to avoid the rush hour, but freeway traffic was still intense and the air was a foul, shiny gray. As I drove at 70 mph for more than an hour through continuous city, the actuality of this shift from wilderness naturalist to suburban teacher pressed down on my soul. The immediate need to find a place to live within this immense city and drive in traffic like this every day was too much. I found myself praying. “Dear God, please help me find a place to live close enough to the school so that I don’t have to drive these freeways every day.” That was my repeated prayer and then, over time, I added “And if there is any way possible, dear God, please clean up this air.”
I arrived at the Farm School and met some of my fellow teachers. Alysia, the lead teacher who had led the summer trip, said that she and another staff member were renting a house within 10 minutes bicycling distance from school. They had a spare room that I could rent until I had time to settle into the job, learn my way around, and find a place of my own. I gratefully accepted and so my prayer was immediately answered; I had a non-rush-hour place to live.
I went to sleep that night in my sleeping bag on the floor of an empty bedroom, the only “furniture” being my backpacking sleeping pad, sleeping bag, and pack. Somewhere in the middle of my sleep that night, a vast, brooding energy roiled within my dreaming consciousness. I was somehow back in the bed at Kiet Siel and I could feel the energy of another storm brewing out in the canyon, matched by a tension churning over and over in my mind. What should I do if a storm broke in the middle of the night? Should I go out in the dark to split the water or just stand in the doorway of the hogan and watch the show? I’d get soaked and cold out in the storm and it would be hard to do anything in the dark, but the stroboscopic blue-white flashes of lightning revealing purple canyon walls and waterfalls would be fantastic and working with runoff in a night storm could be memorable. My dream mind restlessly grappled and churned with the impending energy of the gathering storm. Should I go out into the dark storm or stay inside and watch? And then,
CrackBANG!
The storm broke with a lightning bolt/instantaneous thunderclap exploding overhead! I rose to grab my mattock and rush out into the storm – and found myself rising up off the floor in this strange, bare room, very disoriented as to where I was because rain was now pouring outside. According to Alysia, lightning had just struck the power pole outside her side of the house. A tremendous thunderstorm was centered over us. For an hour it poured. I awoke the next morning to clear air and the beautiful San Bernardino Mountains sixty miles away framing the north end of the Los Angeles Basin. (The average monthly precipitation in Orange County for all of August is .03”.)
– – – – – – –
Part of me wants to end this chapter simply with the facts. But that experience confuses me. Was it just an amazing coincidence or did my prayer or my dreams contribute to the storm in any way? By training, I am inclined toward scientific explanations. Any explanation of prayer runs into rebuttals of “but what if other people were praying for a different kind of weather?” For me, science provides firm, testable ground to stand on. Appeals to something beyond have little support.
And yet, I was coming from days spent within massive
cloudbursts, inhaling the ozone, feeling the pressure changes that precede a
cloudburst, running around wet within canyon-vibrating electrical storms. If I
was a rechargeable battery, I was fully, fully recharged. My state of
consciousness during that dream was very actively engaged in something beyond
myself. The most plausible explanation is that I had become so attuned at Kiet
Siel to the subtle indicators of an incipient thunderstorm that my dream was responsively
being shaped by the subtle meteorological forerunners of the LA storm which
coincidentally happened the night after my prayer. But
on the other hand, the lightning bolt that cracked opened the downpour was
right overhead. That LA storm leaves me feeling that what is possible with our lives
is more undefined than we often acknowledge in the conversations by which we mutually
shape our expectations of what is possible. I don’t know what happened there but
I will stand by my non-conclusive description as being as accurate as possible.
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