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Field Notes

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

Further Notes on the Drylands

The summer’s fires still burned through the depths of winter, hidden from sight beneath the black scars on the land where they had previously raged. They slumbered now, patiently waiting for the inevitable turning of the seasons. The winter had not been cold enough, nor had there been enough snow, to douse the flames. And when spring came and the days began to lengthen and warm, the fires would be ready to rise from the dark earth and begin to feed again. 

It hardly felt like winter, except for two weeks of such bitter cold that everyone was left feeling as though they had been transported to some far polar clime. There were as many days above freezing as below it seemed. When it snowed warmth soon followed, returning the hills to a barren state. Even in the valleys they could see the brown grass poking up through the thin patches of white. The snow did not melt so much as evaporate, the ground still frozen far below so that the water could not penetrate.  

Rivers, which had dwindled to trickles over the summer and fall, continued to shrink until it seemed the flow might cease entirely. Reservoirs and lakes were low, exposing the pipes where water was pumped out to the surrounding communities. Everywhere they looked bare, silted and creviced land was exposed. They felt exposed too; the world they thought they lived in had gone away and what came next was unclear.  

In centuries past it was said there were droughts in these parts that lasted for decades. 40 years of drylands. The last hundred or so had been wet ones by comparison, though not without dry years intermixed. The usual way of things had been a few years of dry, followed by a few years of wet, balancing everything out. Water had not exactly been plentiful, but there had been more than enough for growing communities, expanding irrigation and oil drilling. Now it was clear there would not be enough for things to go on as usual.  

Politicians spoke of crisis, of not watering lawns or taking shorter showers, to ensure there would be enough water this year for farmers irrigating, communities to drink and oil companies to drill. A crisis suggested this was a temporary moment, from which there would be a return to normality. But if the aberration had been the last century, with its lack of decade spanning drought, then it was a crisis so much as a return to an old equilibrium, hurried on by a warming climate. No one wanted to acknowledge that possibility, for it mean the end of life as it had been in these parts.  

Field Notes

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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.