I for one miss the little meandering wash of 20 years ago.
I miss walking the in it. I miss the little thread of water that was in the bottom of the wash almost year round and the way my dogs would find pools to lay in and cool off during our walks.
I miss the treasures of semi polished stones that could be sometimes be found in the wash bed.
We used to have coyotes come to the wash, morning and evening for water.
Geology students from local high schools and colleges would come here for samples and classes. The instructor teaching the class about the mountains, their relative youth and the minerals found here.
Then some kind of flood event happened or the wash became perceived as a threat.
Mitigation efforts began, and the wash became wider, deeper, filled with more loose soil eroding ever more rapidly and our little wash was suddenly, one Spring afternoon… gone.
It was replaced by a large grey dusty, dry, gaping wound most of the time. At other times is was turned into a raging angry torrent of muddy water and boulders that shook the ground.
In the final mitigation project… Stone, concrete, roads, barriers, and control demonstrate that sometimes it’s better to have left well enough alone.
The project goes forward 6 days a week. Rumbling machines, digging equipment, cement trucks, rock carriers, and all manner of big Tonka toys. (The rock trucks are a touch of irony they’re bringing rocks UP from the desert to reinforce the sides of the wound they’ve created.) Our little wash is being remade, reformed, conquered, dominated, dare I say raped?
I think all of us luxuriate in Sundays because we can sleep a little later and have a whole day where there’s nothing but the sound of wind and birdsong in the trees.
On Sunday, people come to the rim of what used to be a gentle little wash with water in it most of the time.
They gape at the canyon that now separates one side from the other, some shake their heads and go back inside their homes then draw the blinds on the windows facing the wash.
Others are angry and others still, are just sad.
I hope that as the work finishes and the trees are replanted the “revised” wash won’t be such a glaring permanent reminder of mans desire to dominate nature.
I have a feeling that the wound will be a very long time healing.
Time will tell if this flood project will prevent the roads from being washed out. I suspect that it will create pools of standing, stagnant water. That will no doubt require more “maintenance” from the county to keep the mosquitoes down.
Our little wash was in reality gone the minute bulldozers rolled in 10 or 15 years ago.
They cut and gouged their way toward the mountain, each year going further and deeper. Some years when the bulldozers didn’t come, the wildlife came back, coyotes, and bears, raccoons, deer and the occasional cougar or bobcat, and other critters.
The balance would be disrupted again by the growl of heavy diesel engines and the wash got deeper, & wider. Eventually water didn’t flow and collect anymore so neither did the wildlife.
Through the years, we had hope that the bulldozers wouldn’t come again and the wash would recover.
It’s certain now that our little babbling wash is gone forever.
With it, one of the reasons I chose to live here.
It’s not your fault, Mr Flood Control. You’re doing your job and your goal is to protect property, homes, and prevent roads from being washed out.
I get it, but I’ll mourn the loss of the shallow little wash behind my house;
The wash with a few errant Mt. Mahogany’s growing in the middle of it.
The wash where I took my Geologist father, who spent hours looking at the tailings.
Finally he loaded up a fair sized backpack with actinolite, then handed it to me to hump out of the wash. Those samples he sent to his geologist buddies all over the world, because thats how geologists give gifts to each other.
More recently the wash was a place where a precocious little girl all of 5 years old pronounced with the absolute certainty only a 5 year old can have, that we couldn’t be in a creekbed, riverbed or wash.
When I inquired why, she pointed out that stones in creeks and rivers were rounded, therefore since these rocks were jagged this wasn’t a creek, river, or wash.
She modified her conclusion when I pointed out how close the mountain peaks were and asked how far she thought the rock had to tumble to get smooth. To this day I don’t know if she believed me, but she took it under advisement.
See it’s not just a wash that sometimes flooded. To us, it’s a place of memories, wildlife, discovery, and laughter.
Well… It was all of these things, when it was the shallow little wash behind the house.
To the people on the town council, the wash was simply an inconvenience when they had to take the long way out of town.
To the county and flood control, it was a potential hazard.
To the people who live along the wash, it was a neighbor who sometimes had a bad day or two, but a neighbor whose good days and benefits greatly outweighed the bad.
You see, Flood Control.
We were angry and are sad because we’re mourning the loss of a friend & the natural wildness we moved 90 miles away from Los Angeles to enjoy.