This is obvious to anyone who has a pond they take care of (probably not a lot of people), but most ponds are hybrid environments – part natural, and part man-made. This past couple of weeks have made this hybrid more conscious because of two events: 1) Algae bloom; and 2) Cleanout.

As a reminder, our pond is filled by water that flows down Two Mile Gulch which comes out of our southwest from a pipe about 200' higher than us. The flow is controlled by the local water district, and there's no "plan" for when they start and stop pumping. So man-made, but not predictable (believe me, I've asked).

This is a picture of the algae bloom that showed up a few days after they turned off the water. We've had our pond since 2006, and have never seen this kind of algae bloom… I'm guessing there was something in the pumped water, maybe as a result of fire retardant from the recent Cold Springs Fire. This website reports: "In still bodies of water like lakes and ponds, concentrated doses of retardant can immediately kill fish, or the nitrogen and phosphorus in retardants can lead to algae blooms that consumes oxygen and kills fish slowly over time." Thankfully we don't "keep" fish in our pond (because of the unpredictable nature of the water level).

The second aspect of the hybrid is itself a hybrid… the cleaning out of our pond a few times a year. It occurs because of the 150+ gallons/minute that the pump delivers (plus gravity) and what it picks up as it travels down the gulch naturally, ends up settling in our pond, which is the first flat area of slow-moving water.

Above is an example of the sediment forming two distinct layers, a lower layer of dense water-impermeable clay, and a top layer composed of sand and stones. Volume for volume, the former weighs about three times the latter. That dual layer pattern occurs throughout our pond, which is divided into an upper and lower part. The upper part where the water first enters is shallow (< 2' deep), then it flows into a deeper part (≈ 4') before it spills over our spillway/dam into the culvert and down the other side all the way to our Pine Brook Hills Dam about a half mile away as the crow flies. Depending on the time of year and the water flow, once or twice a year now the parts start to fill up and while it's running, we'll clean it out (see my earlier blog for this 'aha!') by first pulling the plug out of the bottom of the dam, and letting the water flow through the drain into the culvert, naturally taking sediment along with it. This week we spent a total of about 5 hours between the two of us "facilitating" this process, and moved about three cubic yards of material down the culvert. Moving the dense clay is harder because it's heavy, so it doesn't move well in the running water. But below is the end result that we're enjoying for a while longer until they turn the water off again and the pond drains.

The idea for our pond came up when we found out that our local water company was planning on building a dam at the bottom of the canyon that acts as the main artery in and out of our rural forest subdivision. I was against the idea of the dam at first; it was very expensive (almost $10 million), but changed my mind when I found out that the “headwater” (outlet pipe) for the pumped water flowing to the reservoir comes out just above our property in Two Mile Creek, the natural ravine of the Two Mile Gulch watershed. It also happened to run through a culvert right underneath our driveway. It ends up there are a dozen property owners who happen to have this waterway somewhere through their property; ours happens to be 30’ from our house.

Needless to say we wanted this watercourse to be very robust, in order to handle over 200,000 gallons a day, for many days, of water flowing through it. When I built my house in 1999, there was already a culvert on the property, and I extended it another 30’, with no thought that it would be used for this new purpose. That reminded me of something Steve Jobs talked about in his commencement address about “connecting the dots”:

“Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

So my life brought me this opportunity to connect the dots to something I did 16 years ago, when my current life conditions were simply not imaginable. In October 2005, a year before the water district was scheduled to “turn on the water” for the first time (October 5, 2006), my partner Aria and I designed and built (with friends) a dam and dry stacked stone patio. In 2010, we repurposed that stone, and built a nicer patio area that we distill lavender on each year.

From day one, we see that there would be a significant buildup of silt, etc. from the water slowing down when it hit our dam. Each year we need to remove 10-20 cubic yards of gravel, sand, silt and clay, or else our beautiful pond area would fill up and cease to exist. For most of that time, I’ve dreaded this project; it usually takes hiring a team of folks to hand-dig it all out (because it’s too destructive to use machinery), usually taking 50-60 people-hours. On the one hand feeling like a "job creator," and on the other feeling the toll it takes on our bodies, as well as the labor costs involved.

Our typical process has been to wait until the pond is filled in with material, and when the water district stops pumping water (which it does for a few months a year), remove the plug in the dam which lowers the water level about three feet, wait awhile for the exposed material to start drying out; then dig it all out by hand and move it elsewhere on the property.

Last year Aria came up with a brilliant alternative that she’d stumbled on the year before. Instead of waiting until the water stopped running, why notlet the flowing water transport the material downstream, help it move through the drain, work with the flow by channeling it to different areas of the pond, and see what happens.

The outcome has been very successful. It takes the two of us a few days, a couple hours a day, with the water doing all the "heavy moving".

Lessons have abounded from this process:

Going with the flow reduces the work, and brings joy and generative energy.
I get into “water time” because I’m basically looking at flowing water the whole time, and my sense of “clock” time fades into the background.
I’ve learned to appreciate the moments… like moving all the material from around the drain through it into the culvert… it’s satisfying to see the same kind of suction through the drain as I do with the recirculation system we use when we distill lavender. And I can come back in an hour and see it all built up by the drain again, ready for my next meditation with it.
I’ve learned about how sand, silt and clay settle in a pond… strata with the dense clay below… hard and heavy enough so you don’t want to try to lift a full shovel-full very often. And ontop of the clay, layers of silt andsand which move much easier through the flowing water. The clay material tends to stick together like glue, and eventually forms abarrier limiting the water from seeping downward. Our pond is probably half-full with it. We use that density to help divert the water where we want it to go… and help move it downstream and through the culvert as well.
I love it that my masculine side leaned toward finding a machine to help me move all that material… and Aria came up with a feminine version which does the job very well indeed by using the energy of nature rather than fighting against it.
Cultivating awareness of my body as I movearound the pond, dancing with the water andmaterial… when I can get an almost tai-chi movement going, skimming shovel-fulls toward the drain; as well as feeling the soreness when I’m lifting heavy loads of the dense clay.

Our Pond: A Hybrid Environment

Lessons From the Wildcat Gardens Pond