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.