Tag Archives: water

talk about it

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Some peo­ple think that con­ver­sa­tion has run dry when you start talk­ing about the weather. They’re obvi­ously not gardeners–or even golfers or jog­gers or con­struc­tion work­ers. Weather mat­ters. And I can’t think of many things nearly as fascinating.

Here in the far south­west­ern cor­ner of the coun­try it’s been dry. Scary dry, almost. I have buck­ets below the eaves to catch and save runoff from the roof, and even last week’s “big rain” day didn’t fill them more than half way. At least the storm had the decency to drop some rain by the time I was leav­ing work so that I didn’t feel like a fool for bring­ing an umbrella and tak­ing the car instead of rid­ing my scooter.

Today we’re in Day Two of a sev­eral days of pre­dicted light rain. I’ll keep my fin­gers crossed.


It’s not that I don’t appre­ci­ate the sunny days. Last month we picked a bright weekend–we had many choices–to head east, into the desert. Des­ti­na­tion: Sal­va­tion Mountain.

I’m about as reli­gious as Howard Stern is sub­tle, but you couldn’t not to feel the earnest­ness of this big pile of folk art.

The whole instal­la­tion is built into a hill­side, using not much more than hay­bales, mud and paint. As we walked over it you could hear things crunch­ing under­foot. With­out con­stant main­te­nance the whole thing would start to degrade into the desert around it.

This is a polaroid that some­one had left show­ing Leonard Knight, the man who built this. He gave me a detailed per­sonal tour the last time I vis­ited, maybe five years ago. But the news reports last fall men­tioned that Mr. Knight’s demen­tia was tak­ing over, and he had been insti­tu­tion­al­ized in a facil­ity in El Cen­tro. For an art­work as frag­ile as this is, it seemed like this win­ter might be the last time to see the place in the state that he left it, before the desert claimed it.

The side of the Moun­tain that faces west is crossed by a painted yel­low path up the moun­tain that you can see in this image, the Yel­low­brick Road.

I’m not sure what the main high­way from the Wiz­ard of Oz has to do with the Chris­t­ian mes­sages being com­mu­ni­cated, but there it is. Please stay on it.

Peo­ple bring stuff here. This bible, blow­ing in the wind, fits right in.

Some­thing else peo­ple bring here is paint, thou­sands of gal­lons of it. Used to be, you came to Sal­va­tion Moun­tain, you’d bring a bucket of paint. It was a great way to share paint left­over from projects. The word now, though, is that peo­ple should leave their paint at home, now that Mr. Knight isn’t able to do any­thing with it.

Built into one size are a series of grot­toes that appear to have been built as lit­tle shrines. On a scorch­ing mid­sum­mer day these spaces are a cool escape. Peo­ple have brought con­tri­bu­tions here too, but I’m not sure if the angel and bowl­ing tro­phies were orig­i­nal to Leonard Knight’s orig­i­nal vision.

Parked in front are sev­eral art cars that have been cus­tomized by Mr. Knight. At this point I’m sure they’re fixed sculp­tures and no longer mobile.

[ Details of the art cars… ]

Another fea­ture of the Moun­tain is the side maze-feature, made of tele­phone poles, sal­vaged trees and more hay­bales, mud and paint. It’s hard to pho­to­graph but would work great as a video shown from inside as you walk through it.

Here’s a view from inside the maze, look­ing up.

As long as we were way out in the desert, we stopped by the shores of the Salton Sea, just a cou­ple miles away.

Part of the south shore is set aside as the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge. (Yes, that Sonny Bono, Cher’s late ex.) You don’t see any in this pic­ture, but birds were every­where. You hear about the Pacific Fly­way but it’s always a stun­ning expe­ri­ence to visit one of the main avian truck­stops along the route.


And with this image we return to the theme of rain and water. This view­point is a fairly famous one. I’ve seen a few pho­tos shot from here, with trees cov­ered in birds and still water below, reflect birds and trees. (I have a few old shots myself.) But that was prob­a­bly ten years ago.

South­ern Cal­i­for­nia has been draw­ing increas­ing amounts of water that was for­merly used by farm­ers around the Sea. With less agri­cul­tural runoff to feed it, the water level has been drop­ping, so that the Sea itself is now a quar­ter mile away.

My lit­tle buck­ets of water, plain­tively wait­ing for the rain, prob­a­bly will do next to noth­ing to restore the Salton Sea. But a drop in the bucket is more than noth­ing at all.

wishing for water

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Remem­ber wish­ing wells? In the early 1970s, when I first started pay­ing close atten­tion to gar­dens, every few yards would have a wish­ing well as an accent of the land­scap­ing: Big lawns, lots of flow­ers, the wish­ing well, maybe even a lawn jockey. You don’t see wish­ing wells (or lawn jock­eys) around these parts very often anymore.

wishing-well

The other day I was up on the roof deck, enjoy­ing the breeze. Look­ing in a direc­tion I don’t usu­ally pay much atten­tion to, I noticed this fea­ture in the back yard of one of my neigh­bors. It’s a lit­tle hard to make out, so I’ve enhanced it a lit­tle. Hmmm. Looks like a wish­ing well, maybe 1970s vintage…

Jump ahead 30 years, to the more drought-conscious 21st cen­tury. Many Cal­i­for­ni­ans are reduc­ing or replac­ing their turf. One of the ways that’s used to give some focus or struc­ture to these de-lawned yards is to con­struct a dry stream bed.

(I thought it was inter­est­ing that both these yard accents are all about water. The wish­ing well cel­e­brates the stuff, almost as if it’s avail­able in a mag­i­cal, never-ending sup­ply. The stream bed is more of our time, and acknowl­edges that water is a resource that isn’t always plen­ti­ful and can’t be taken for granted.)

stream-with-duckies

Down the street, another of my neigh­bors has done their own take on a dry stream bed. It has lawn along some of its length, but suc­cu­lents and drought-tolerant plants the rest of the way. And in the mid­dle of the stream…seashells. And these lit­tle yel­low rub­ber duckies…

the rain might not belong to you

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At first I thought it was a good idea. I never imag­ined that in some com­mu­ni­ties it would be prohibited.

bogwater

Dur­ing some of the recent rains I put some lit­tle buck­ets to catch rain­wa­ter that had drained off the roof. In this part of the state you can hardly ever have too much water, and good-quality water is extra-valuable.

drosera-marston-dragon

drosera-capensis-red-form

One of my water-use indul­gences is an exper­i­men­tal lit­tle bog gar­den with car­niv­o­rous plants. Tap water here has four times the dis­solved solids usu­ally rec­om­mended for these swamp-dwellers, so in warmer weather they get five gal­lons a week of reverse osmo­sis water from the local water store. Col­lect­ing fresh rain­wa­ter seemed like a much more sus­tain­able alternative.

Left: Drosera Marston Dragon.
Right: Drosera capen­sis, red form, with deer­fly snack.

Yesterday’s LA Times had an arti­cle on res­i­dents in some of the dry­land Four Cor­ners states who were find­ing out that col­lect­ing rain­wa­ter was actu­ally ille­gal in their com­mu­ni­ties. Because of a com­plex patch­work of water rights agree­ments, many home­own­ers actu­ally don’t own the rain­wa­ter that falls on their houses.

Here’s a quick snip­pet from the article:

“If you try to col­lect rain­wa­ter, well, that water really belongs to some­one else,” said Doug Kem­per, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Col­orado Water Con­gress… Frank Jaeger of the Parker Water and San­i­ta­tion Dis­trict, on the arid foothills south of Den­ver, sees water har­vest­ing as an insid­i­ous attempt to take water from enti­ties that have paid dearly for the resource. “Every drop of water that comes down keeps the ground wet and helps the flow of the river,” Jaeger said. He scoffs at argu­ments that har­vesters like Hol­strom only take a few drops from rivers. “Every­thing always starts with one lit­tle bite at a time.”

I have a healthy respect for the rule of rea­son­able laws, but these seemed way beyond the pale. Like, are they wor­ried these peo­ple are going to bot­tle the rain­wa­ter and sell it to us in South­ern California?

Here within view of the Pacific Ocean, any water not retained in the ground would just wash down the storm drains and slide out into the bay. I doubt we have the same sorts of rules. But for many folks in Utah or Col­orado who are try­ing to grow their own veg­gies, doing what they can to reduce become more self-sustaining and reduce their foot­print on the earth, things aren’t so easy.

What do you think? Should the rain­wa­ter belong to all of us?

desert plants… in the desert

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Let me start with a piece of advice: New hik­ing boots plus old, thin socks can be a painful combination!

bordertopo

Yes­ter­day I tagged along with a group of hik­ers that I’d done a trip with a cou­ple years ago. The des­ti­na­tion this time was a clus­ter of four sur­vey bench­marks along the U.S.-Mexican bor­der. One of them appeared on the map as “Ben­nie.” The oth­ers quickly got tagged as “the Jets,” after the old Elton John song.

Some hik­ers pre­fer leisurely strolls over flat, care­fully main­tained paths. This group isn’t made up of any of that vari­ety. At one point on the hike, while we were cross­ing a broad, flat, sandy val­ley, one of the core mem­bers apol­o­gized to me. “Our hikes are are usu­ally a lot more uphill than this.”

That was what I rec­ol­lected from the last trip I’d taken with the group. But I’m not in the same con­di­tion that I was for that ear­lier hike. Yes­ter­day, thir­teen and a half miles of travel–which included climb­ing up the slick face of a dry water­fall, two stubbed toes and five blis­ters on my feet–was adven­ture enough for me!

borderhikers

Here are some of the hik­ers, includ­ing Para­sol Patsy, who set a high stan­dard of look­ing cool and casual in the wilds.

bordercactus

Say “desert” to any­one and they’ll prob­a­bly think of cac­tus. This is the Cal­i­for­nia bar­rel cac­tus, Fero­cac­tus cylin­draceus. It proved to be a com­mon pres­ence all along the trip when­ever we climbed above the dry stream beds.

borderlandscapewithcactus

The next image shows the hill­side ter­rain, com­plete with bar­rel cac­tus, cholla cac­tus (Cylin­drop­un­tia sp., in the cen­ter, front), and–most dra­matic to the left–ocotillo, Fouquieria splen­dens. Almost any­one who has hiked in these areas knows that a com­mon name for some cholla cac­tus species is “jump­ing cholla,” a piece of urban leg­end deriv­ing from the fact that the plants can break apart into lit­tle bits any­time any­one as much as touches the plant. The lit­tle barbs hold on to your cloth­ing or your skin and work them­selves into your clothes or your skin, tak­ing a piece of the plant with them. It only looks like they jump. (Any­one look­ing for an idea for a hor­ror movie?)

The ocotil­los were leaf­ing out, a sure sign that it’s rained in the area recently. The plants can grow and shed their leaves sev­eral times each year in response to rain­fall. Some were devel­op­ing buds at the ends of their stems in prepa­ra­tion for the out­ra­geous flow­er­ings of tubu­lar orange-red blooms that these plants are capa­ble of.

A "lake" in Davies valley

Another sure sign of recent rains was this mas­sive desert lake, in the heart of Davies Val­ley. Few plants grew in the imme­di­ate area, let­ting you know that these desert plants pre­fer occa­sional sprin­kles of water rather than wal­low­ing in it.

borderdeadshrub

This being the desert, signs of lack of water were all around…

A trip to this area gives you the feel­ing that the bor­der between the U.S. and Mex­ico is a purely arbi­trary one. Gosh, there isn’t even a wel­come sign or a bor­der fence in these parts. How rude.

borderintomexico

borderintomexico2

These are two views into Mex­ico from the promon­to­ries we climbed on the trip. Occa­sional pieces of dis­carded cloth­ing, aban­doned empty water bot­tles and–weirdly–a fry­ing pan let you know that this was an area that was used for bor­der cross­ings. On this late-December day tem­per­a­tures reached the mid-sixties, per­fect hik­ing weather. Bor­der cross­ings done at other times of the year, when the tem­per­a­tures would be over 110, would prove a lot more dangerous.

borderpatrol

Any trip to the bor­der regions isn’t com­plete with­out an encounter with the U.S. Bor­der Patrol. This was out first con­tact, a fly­over by an agency heli­copter. Later, at the end of the hike, as we were pack­ing up our cars, we were vis­ited by agents in two SUVs. For offi­cers who don’t know what to do with the desert it must be a dusty, tedious job. I like to think that attend­ing to a group of tired hik­ers was a fun break in their routine.

The visit by the Bor­der Patrol was a fit­ting end to the trip. This only looked like a trek through unspoiled wilder­ness. The truth is that this is an area that’s com­plex with polit­i­cal intrigue and his­tory, and where the ten­sions of eco­nomic sur­vival coin­cide with issues of basic human endurance and survival.

I try hard to find land­scapes that to me feel pure and untouched by the ways of human­ity. But a trip like this tells you that such a place doesn’t exist.