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October 6, 2008
After the Deluge, The Promise
Master Gardener Column 10/4/08
Tired of all the talk of politics and bank bailouts, I went for a hike. I wanted to feel the sun on my shoulder and to give my mind over to the seasons, the birds, and the clouds. I wasn't disappointed.
Summer has been generous to the northland. The rains came on early and strong along western sections of the Mogollon Rim. Then, over the next week, they drifted eastward as Seligman's roadside sunflowers jumped to their full 6 foot height a good two weeks before Park's and Belmont's did further east. The monsoon took a break for a week in mid-July, only to come roaring back with a vengeance. By July 20th the storms were building daily again, and by August the region was sweating underneath a leaden tropical airmass. We were cocked and loaded for heavy rain.
On August 16 Mother Nature pulled the trigger. A cold, low pressure system spun down the eastern side of the Cascades and collided with August's Mexican airmass. The result was catastrophe. On the 16th, a single squall flooded the hills and valleys north of Williams. The miles-wide storm dropped enough rain and hail to fill every gopher hole and cattle tank from Kaibab Lake to the transwestern pipeline. All this upland water fought its way downhill to Cataract Creek and on its way washed away several miles of west county roads, exploded ages-old dams, and stranded new residents in Cataract's upper watershed.
On the same day, further north over Cataract Creek's central watershed, another storm repeated his cousin's act to the south, assaulting Tin House, Redlands Ranch, and Willaha. By nightfall on Saturday, Cataract Creek from Kaibab Lake to Hualapai Canyon had become one long, snaking river.
The next day, the formula was repeated. Sunday, the storms piled up in the same places and the rain fell as ferociously as on Saturday. The ground was already saturated, and the deluge sheeted, gathered, and rolled immediately. Over the weekend, more than 5 inches of rain fell on the cinder cones and rolling plains north of Williams with 8 inches falling further north in places just upstream from Red Lake Dam. In just two days as much as half of our region's annual average precipitation fell from the sky.
The rest is history. Every drop of the weekend's downpour had to run down Cataract Creek. Red Lake Dam and tens of smaller earthen dams in the flood's path failed. The flash flood that thundered down Cataract Creek slammed, unbridled, into Supai's creekside trails.
The fury of nature brought out the best in human beings. Coconino County's Search and Rescue teams conducted historic, emergency evacuations in the path of the region's most catastrophic flood in decades.
It's late September now, and the excitement and urgency of the summer's storms seem far away today. But the water from the season's rains still lurks in the earth, trapped in clays just below the surface or sequestered deeper in the pores of limestone shelves.
On my hike today I saw the signs of it everywhere. Blue grama grass coats the open plains more densely than I have ever seen it. The pines are refreshed and firm. Groups of chalky, yellow paper flowers beckon my eye to the right, and the perfect purple of the Colorado four o'clock, tucked under the arm of a one-seed juniper, tugs my eye back to the left. Drifts of knee-high asters scatter a vivid blue across the hills, a little here, a lot over there. And mounds of rabbit brush paint the land a golden yellow. It seems as if every saltbush and barberry hosts at least one bright green praying mantis, its belly fat with next year's eggs.
Best of all, the rains left behind a promise. All the seeds and flowers gestating in September's sun are the season's promise to sparrows and doves, chipmunks and squirrels, that they will find plenty of food this fall to get them through the hard winter ahead. Just like politics' shock and awe, the beauty of nature's shock and awe is always waiting for us just around the corner.
Steve Shields, a Master Gardener Volunteer, lives off-the-grid atop a bluff on the banks of Cataract Creek. Dana Prom Smith, a Master Gardener volunteer and coordinating editor of the Master Gardener Column for Coconino County Cooperative Extension, can be contacted at stpauls@npgcable.com. For more information about the Master Gardener Program, call Hattie Braun, Coordinator of the Master Gardener Program, at 774-1868 ext.17 or visit our Web Site: highelevationgardening.arizona.edu.
Posted by maxmaddy at October 6, 2008 5:24 AM