Ranch Animals

[I originally wrote this in November 2011, but never posted this series on the local geology. The pictures are still worth seeing.]

Last week I returned to the washes that lay to the right when I was following the road south of my fence. The thing that originally struck me was that the wash stopped at the fence that marked the boundary with pueblo land.

I couldn’t see how nature would respect mere strings of barbed wire and sapling posts. I supposed it was possible, given the way the land varies, that whoever claimed land out of the pueblo grant followed some natural indicator, say the variety of grass which reflected something about the underlying soil structure, but I really couldn’t credit the idea much.

I turned to follow the fence towards the arroyo and found something strange. Maybe ten feet to the side of the barbed wire boundary was a line of farm fence topped by several lines of barbed wire creating a sort of no-man’s land between. The gully began at the farm fence post.

The lane ended abruptly with a line of barbed wire cutting between the two fences and a wash that made it nearly impossible to walk by. The boundary fence continued to the arroyo; the farm fence stopped. It could have been some kind of animal enclosure, but I couldn’t really see what or why.

Yesterday, I went back to the near arroyo to follow the right bank back to the cactus field. The arroyo maintained its lake like appearance on this side of a barbed wire fence marking the pueblo boundary.

I followed the bank back to its farthest corner where I found the remains of wooden chutes used in some way to corral animals. If the current width is any indication, it was probably sheep rather than cattle.

There had been similar remains on my uphill neighbor’s land and in the barbarian’s wash near the road, but they’ve since been cleared away.

As I looked out over the land, the eroded gullies were, for the most part, limited to the private side of the fence like they were further south.

I now wondered exactly what animals could have done to precipitate the natural forces that were uncovering the older landscape. If the contours existed then, I suppose they would have followed the valleys were grass might be lusher and eaten the ground bare, leaving it open to wind and water.

I suppose it’s also possible that the softer spots in the land caved under their weight, and those low spots became the targets of the weather. Between the gullies, the land remains grassy knolls that hide the open trenches. The steppe scrub that returns with overgrazing appears in limited patches in the washes and nearest the road and ATV trails.