Happy 4th of July

Happy Independence Day and we hope you have had a fun, relaxing day. Alan and I stayed home, except for a walk up to our neighbor Lynn’s place to say hi. Yesterday, it rained a lot, and we finally experienced our first flash flood. The creek rose 2 feet in 2 minutes. Having never seen that before, it was pretty impressive and a bit scary. The water in the picture above is actually about 50′ across; normally it is dry or maybe a foot wide. It was exciting, and a test of our new fence.

This morning I went out in my rubber boots and checked the 2 places where the fence crosses the arroyo. One was fine, but the other (above) was piled up with a large log and 4′ of brush and dirt and had ripped out a post. The water was already receded. We got it fixed easily enough, but there’s definitely a learning curve with fences built across arroyos that flood! I was in my element: getting my boots muddy, splashing around in water.

Living this remotely means a type of self-reliance that is hard to imagine if you live in a city or suburb, or even outside of a town like Durango. It’s a 2 1/2 hour drive to Home Depot, so you want to be sure of what you need! In ordinary times it’s a challenge, but with current supply issues, it can be really frustrating. No fun to drive that far to find that they don’t have that 1 1/4″ male PVC adaptor after all. As a result, both Alan and I are improving many skills: in plumbing, construction, even in gardening; making do with what we have on hand has been taken to a whole new level.

Then you get surprised: the Jicarilla Apache Grocery and Hardware in Dulce ( 12 minutes away} has that adaptor in stock today. And Dory, the manager, sells it to you at 70% off and a new story about the UFO he saw last week. What’s not to love?

But all this has made me think a lot about the Right to Repair Movement (https://www.repair.org/stand-up) and its effort to make manufacturers design products that can be repaired by buyers and/or private repair people. This movement became big in the auto industry, when only dealers had the ability to read/repair the computers in our vehicles. Now, thanks to successful lawsuits, that knowledge must be shared with private auto repair shops and individuals interested in learning such as college automotive programs. The Right to Repair movement wants those rights to include (in part) appliances, computers, and tools. If my washing machine breaks down, I need to be able to watch a YouTube that will tell me how to fix it, and then be able to buy the exact parts I need online to do it. There are no “authorized Westinghouse dealers” within 150 miles. Not that I want to repair my washing machine, but I also don’t want to have to just run out and buy a new one just because a cog wore out. As my mother used to rant: “built-in obsolescence should be outlawed.”

The rain has brought back the grass from absolutely dead to lush and emerald green. It’s one of the most wonderful things about the desert: the resilience and adaptability of this harsh land.

A few days ago, the crew finished 3,000′ of new fence. It encloses about 12 acres, including the house, a big meadow and a long stretch of the arroyo. The purpose is to keep cows out and begin regenerating the land. I’ll talk about Open Range laws another time.