In all we got almost two inches of rain yesterday, and it shows in the ruts on the slopes and the piled-up mud on the flats. My particular concern, erosion-wise, was at Ian’s place…
…where erosion is washing the sand out from behind his cave and threatening to turn it back into a dome in the fullness of time. This actually started a couple of years ago but yesterday there were noticeable inroads and it was clearly past time to do something.
To be honest I didn’t want to dam this up because the rut makes walking behind the dome for other repair easier, but enough was enough. This moist morning before it got hot, I took the Jeep to a rock field in the wash…
Loaded the back with as much as I could without bogging down in the wet sand, and then with those rocks and some concrete blocks…
…I made a quick’n’ugly dam. Unless the water plays a mean trick on me, that’ll stop the sand from returning to the wash from the top of Ian’s Cave.
I take it you don’t have a community backhoe around that you could use?
Oh God no. My closest friends here would be reluctant to lend me their backhoe and I’d be reluctant to ask. Lending any tool at all is risky: there are some tools you never lend. A “community backhoe” would demonstrate the Tragedy of the Commons before its first tank of fuel was used up.