Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Drylands

The river, which in spring had briefly threatened to overspill its banks, was reduced to a near trickle, the stones that lined its bottom visible from the shore. They could walk across it without the water getting much higher than their ankles, though no one did. There was a time when such an event would have made travel easier – no need to find a place to ford – though no one would have been happy at the fact. A low river meant the same thing then as now: drought. 

The signs were visible everywhere. Leaves were already turning on the trees though it was still the middle of August. The crops were turning too, stunted and only half-filled out. The June rains had been miserly and the heat through July punishing. Creek beds and sloughs that might have kept water until midsummer had been dry since June. The mountains to the west had been bare since the end of May. Unheard of, though there was always someone to point out when it had last happened as though that were evidence of anything.  

The groundwater, always low through the summer months, was dangerously so now. The well they had dug when they first arrived was running dry. The water table had fallen several feet the year before and a warm and dry winter had not raised it. This year the levels were dropping fast, lower than they had ever seen. They had to be careful about how much water they used and had started contemplating drilling a new and deeper well. It was that or risk having to truck water in. 

With the creeks and sloughs and even the dugouts low and dry, there was a risk the cattle in the pastures wouldn’t have water, though they would run out of feed before that happened. The grass was burning up in the heat, turning brown, looking tired. Many years they might keep the cattle out on the pastures into September or even October, before turning them out onto fall grazing, the stubble left over from the harvested crops. Not this year. There wasn’t enough feed to get them through a normal winter, let alone having to start feeding early. Everyone was selling or planning to in the coming weeks. Shrinking their herds. The land couldn’t support them this year and maybe not next too. 

As August stretched on dry and hot, they had more difficulties with the well and realized they had no choice but to drill a new one. Test holes were sunk in the pasture near their house trying to avoid the gravel that pockmarked most of the surrounding land. A likely spot was found and the earth was cored out. Water flowed in and they lapped it out to see how much flow there was. Piping was put into the hole, surrounded by gravel and sand permeable enough to let the ground water through. The pipe itself had holes to allow the water to flow. A pump was attached and trenching dug and more piping laid in the ground to connect the well to the house.  

The day after the well was drilled it rained, a terrible thunderstorm with lightning cascading through the night. The rain lasted through the night, washing the land clean. Or it would have, if the storm had not brought smoke from the western fires with it.