New seeps…

The wash ran five days ago – actually it ran twice that day – and parts of it still haven’t dried out which really says something about how saturated the ground has gotten during this long soaky Monsoon which I hope we’ve seen the last of.

And I have further evidence that the water issue at Ian’s place isn’t runoff so much as water percolating up from under the surface. Here and there in my stomping grounds are what some people call ‘springs’ – they’re really no more than seeps – and now there’s a new one not far from the Lair…

I’ve lived next to this bend in the wash for ten years now, and this was never here before in my memory. It’s been here all this month, and got a lot more evident this week after Sunday’s rain.

The wash is constantly re-sculpting itself – we live in what you might call a dynamic environment. Used to be there were two distinct channels in the part of the wash that flows past the Lair, with a little island between them that had been there long enough to grow thick with bushes. That island took a serious hit last year and is now almost entirely gone. Sunday chewed a new channel through it…

Another wet summer and I’ll just have a big wide wash to look across. Kind of miss that island, but everything around here changes. I don’t miss it as much as my big shady spot.

But anyway, I think that seep at the turn of the wash explains what’s going on under Ian’s place. There’s no obvious runoff that could explain why water is percolating up under his slab, but there really doesn’t have to be one. Now I’m thinking it’s just another seep, and my experience with Michigan basements reinforces my notion that the only thing that’ll fix it is to dig a sump under the floor and install a float pump.