wading to the cement bridge (pix, dial-up warning - I should know!)

Kali

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Tue Sep-07-10 12:30 AM
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wading to the cement bridge (pix, dial-up warning - I should know!)

This evening since we got another good rain this afternoon, I decided to relive a little activity from my childhood and this post is inspired by two current threads. Thomcat's "pix of things you love" and Tobin's "pleasant memories".

When my sisters and I were little, we spent most summers here on the ranch with our grandparents while my parents worked out of state. We learned early to look forward to the summer rains, not only because it meant we got a break from being so worried about water all the time, but soon the canyon would run. This was an event as notable as the rain itself and always got written down in the rain gauge book that documented all moisture since January of 1951.

The part us kids got excited about was water to PLAY in! The first day after the first flow we would be out the door at the crack of dawn and on our way up stream. Going from pool to pool, looking for a good deep one we might actually be able to "swim" in (float full length without touching bottom or edges). Later we would catch tadpoles and watch the little toads transform in homemade terrarium/aquariums, but the first day was just about the water. We had silly names for the side canyons and various landmarks. Bathtub Canyon, Lizard Rock Canyon, Triangle Rock, etc. Two actual man-made landmarks are The Dam and The Cement Bridge (this is in contrast to The Two Wooden Bridges).

Anyway, I decided to walk up to the Cement Bridge this evening. I went barefoot, as I often do. It was so beautiful - the running water, the GREEN, the smells of moisture, wet soil, seep willows and the sound of doves and running water. The heavy breathing of a fat old woman trudging through the sand and rocks.:rofl:

This is looking downstream from behind the barn:

Here is a shot looking upstream. Note the almost "pruned" tree. Conveniently browsed by cows and mule deer to head-height for human walkers.

This is The Dam:

Long ago there was a pipe that ran to the house (about a half mile) from a spring box built behind it. My Mother remembered it being used when she was a child, but it was long out of commission in my time. Oddly, having played and ridden up and down and hiked and waded past it for most of my life, I never knew about the spring box until about 15 years ago, a cousin that was trading work for pasture got overly energetic one day and walked up there with a shovel and dug the opening out. It has a concrete box on the upstream side that should have a heavy steel lid on it and under it and along the whole length of the dam (again on the upstream side is a timbered "box" that functioned as a spring for the water held in the sand to flow clear and then on into the pipe to a storage tank at the house, just low enough in elevation to flow by gravity to a tank at head height by the kitchen door.

As kids this was an important spot because sometimes the wash flowed fast and cleared out all the sand on the downstream side and made one of the biggest deepest pools in the whole canyon. Other times it would fill completely with sand and would just be a mild waterfall and we would need to continue our search. It is a medium small pool today.

And this is the Cement Bridge:

It was built in the thirties by the WPA as the road was the main thoroughfare then. (before Highway 86 and then Interstate 10). Like The Dam, sometimes there is a good pool on the downstream side, sometimes not. Not much of a pool today. Another plus with the bridge was SHADE because it would usually be mid morning by the time we wandered up here. For the fat old lady it has the first decent seating. since The Dam ;-)

see? barefoot

view back the way I came, looking downstream