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It All Flows Downstream
My name is Zach Farley, and I work for Borderlands Restoration Network as the Watershed Crew Lead. I began at BRN in the Native Plant Program as a temporary seed collection tech, and it was my first real experience working with people who loved plants and animals with all their hearts. Botanists, horticulturists, ecologists. I’d heard of these people before, but had never really experienced them in all of their glory. I learned about longifolia, side oats gramma, and curtapendula. I could feel the love pouring from the hearts of the people who told me all about these plants. So much passion, so much curiosity, and so much wonder.
As seed collection techs, we would take the agaves grown at BRN’s nursery and plant them in the field. One day, while planting agaves in a fenced area along the Wildlife Corridor, I had my dog, Dolly, with me. I was minding my business, planting, when a gentleman walked up to me. He said, “Hi, my name is David Seibert. How are you doing?” I looked up at him and said, “I'm doing great, just here planting agaves.”
He commented, “Do you like rocks?” I responded, “I like rock music, so I guess I like them ok.” He said that BRN is looking for someone to build one rock dams, Zuni bowls, and media lunas. I said, “Ok,” not really knowing what he was talking about.
On a hot summer day, our team went into the field with the BECY crew. David was teaching the group about erosion control techniques: where and how to build one-rock dams, media lunas, and small Zuni bowls. I was intrigued. What was going on here? What was happening with all of the rocks, and what was BRN doing with them? As he explained, I could see that the rocks were holding the earth together, capturing loose sediment and earth from above provides places for plants to grow. The structures hold moisture like a sponge and support life by watering plants. I tried my hand at it, placing rocks side by side. Big ones and small ones, some here and some there, making them short, making them tall.
Later that season, after the monsoon rains had fallen, I could see what worked and what didn't. Some structures were magnificent, some were grand, and others just were not. Later that year, I took some hands-on erosion control classes. Now I had the proper techniques and had an idea where to place them. Having said all of this, it doesn’t mean everything you build is going to last the test of time, but it does mean you have a chance. Many one-rock dams hold a stream together just as many members hold a team together. We start at the top of the watershed with dam number one. Expanding as long as it needs, but only as tall as it needs. The next dam has the top of the lowest point eyed with the bottom of the one higher than it. On it goes all the way downstream.
If one-rock dams are a symbol of the present, seed balls are a symbol of the future; things to come and things blossoming into fruition. Seed balls anchor themselves in the dams, giving the seeds a chance to grow in the watershed rather than being washed away. By mixing seed with clay and other earthly materials, our work bursts into scenes of intense natural beauty.
I have been working for BRN for eight years now, and my heart has grown just like a wild sotol plant reaching for the sky, with my roots reaching deeply like an oak, and for that I am truly thankful. Over those eight years, our crew has filled canyons throughout southern Arizona with structures from top to bottom, leaving behind a path of stabilized sediment, thriving native plants, and ecologically rich places for wildlife to dwell. It makes my heart full to know that water is much like life; it all flows downstream.
