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Where the Borrego Roam and Palms Thrive Sanjiv Nanda March 23, 2020
Year-round residents of our desert know that water is key to survival. Just ask the bighorn. Or consult our native sage, the California Fan Palm. The atmospheric river from the South Pacific returned this week after a hiatus in January and February. Heavy rains started overnight on Wednesday and downpours continued through the day on Thursday. On Thursday, an inch and a half of rain fell between 7 a.m. and noon. Dry at most times, San Felipe Wash flowed across SR-78 like a raging river and blocked traffic for four hours on Thursday afternoon. Traffic into Borrego Springs was disrupted from the east, west and south. Traffic on S-22 was still blocked on Friday morning by the debris flow across the road. Rainstorms in the desert and our nearby mountains bring dangerous flash floods in desert washes. The violence subsides quickly although the soft sticky mud that clings to your boots might remain in the washes for a few days. In the mountains the rain water rushes rapidly down steep slopes and normally dry creeks, plunges down dry waterfalls. The debris carried by the water builds up the alluvial fan. A day later, the dry waterfalls are dry again. An occasional puddle may survive for a week. Relatively small quantities of the storm water sink through rocky mountain crags and collect in huge aquifers that lie deep in the mountain’s heart. Gaps and cracks in the underlying strata create subterranean water flows that emerge as hillside springs and seeps. A spring-fed creek may have surface flow for a short distance before the water dives back and continues its subterranean flow. Year-round residents of our desert know that water is key to survival. Just ask the bighorn. Or consult our native sage, the California Fan Palm. ***   Palms like their feet wet. Where there are palm groves in our desert, there is water close to the surface. At the eponymous Borrego Palm Canyon, in most years surface water flow is found near the first palm grove year-round. If you want to meet bighorn sheep in late spring or summer, an early morning hike into the crown jewel of our park, will often prove rewarding. If you don’t find them there, they are probably off visiting one of the numerous palm groves in the vicinity. Rugged, rocky creeks that descend from the towering San Ysidro mountains that flank Borrego Springs to the west are home to dozens of palm groves. Nearby, the grove in Flat Cat Canyon sits on a very steep slope halfway up the mountain. The grove in Hellhole Canyon is more accessible as it straddles the creek closer to the valley floor. Head north and west to Sheep Canyon reached by fording Third Crossing (which has year- round water) and getting up the  Bypass. The first palm grove is visible from Sheep Canyon campground and is easily accessed.  Heading south along Indian Canyon from the campground, steep, rugged, Cougar Canyon branches out to the west. Further south, the Deering Canyon Tunnel also branches off to the west. Each is rocky, rugged and challenging to traverse and each is dotted with palm groves as you move deeper and higher. Before you get to the Deering Canyon Tunnel, beautiful Bennis Bowl (in some USGS maps referred to as the Valley of the Thousand Springs!) is covered with brittlebush and chuparosa that flower every spring. A dozen clumps of palms dot the sides of the bowl. Just north of Third Crossing and west of Lower Willows, a large palm grove sits on flat terrain at the intersection of Indian Creek with Coyote Creek. So, how many of these numerous palm groves have you visited? And did you see bighorn? Or see signs of their presence - tracks and scat? ***   Besides these spring-fed creeks with thriving palm groves, the bighorn know other places that water can be found in the long, hot summer when daytime highs can stay above a hundred degrees for a month and nighttime lows remain in the eighties. Rattlesnake Spring in the Santa Rosas is a surreal bowl of dazzling white calcium-rich deposits that tell a history of plentiful water. A small spring remains that still provides reliable year-round water. Rattlesnake Spring is both a source of sustenance for the bighorn as well as a bighorn graveyard. The spring has year-round water available not just for the sheep, but for their prime predator, the mountain lion, as well. Signs of recent predation are everywhere. Bighorn also utilize natural water tanks, or tinajas, that are carved out by the force of water at the foot of dry waterfalls. While tinajas are found in many  mountain washes, a series of tinajas about three miles up.  Smoketree Wash, are significant as they are particularly deep and frequently have water into late spring. Follow the bighorn, and listen for the whisper of the California Fan Palm. They will tell you about reliable water in the dry mountains around us.
Borrego Humor - The long and complicated journey of Mike's keys Mike McElhatton March 15
This is a story that took place a bit in the past, but it is a story that speaks to the quirky small town nature of Borrego Springs, and I offer it here to convey the kind of place Borrego Springs is, and also hope that it brings some chuckles. For a start, I am a person who misplaces everything, wallet, keys, phones, and much more. Everyone around me is accustomed to me tearing a place apart to find the latest thing I have lost track of.  So one afternoon in our small office at ABDNHA, I sat working at my desk as a technical repair person (I won't say who) was all over the office doing what he had to do. In a short while he left.  When the end of the day came, I could not find the keys to my scooter, which I was driving to and from work at the time.  I looked everywhere, and before long my two work companions at ABDNHA, Betsy our executive director, and Andrea our office manager, were assisting in the search, as they have done many times before. ...At one point, after much looking and no keys, Betsy suggested I check the post office because anyone in Borrego who finds lost keys knows to take them to the post office. "It is what people do," she told me. I thought this was completely absurd; that keys which were obviously in my office, because I had driven my scooter there, would be found in our office by someone who would then take them to the post office on the slim chance that the owner of the keys might look there. Eventually, I gave up with no keys to be found and called my wife, Terri, who brought me a second set of keys to the scooter. The next day I came in and started work, but also had those keys on my mind and looked here and there to no avail.  The repair man came back to finish his work.  He overheard the conversation and he asked me if I had lost keys, and I told him that I did.  "I found some keys yesterday," he said, and he described them as having a Honda scooter key on the ring. He said he found them in the street.  "Where are they now?" I asked.  He replied that he had taken them to the post office.  So I went to the post office and asked what they would do if a set of keys were turned in, a set which also had a key on the ring to a local post office box.  "We would put them in the appropriate postal box," I was told.  So I gave them my box number, and they looked. "No luck," they said. "The keys are not there."  I explained that someone had turned in these keys earlier in the day and they must be around somewhere. "Well, the only other place to look would bethe lost key box," I was told.  I asked if we might have a look in this lost key box.  Before long they came back to the counter with an old wooden box. By the look of it was probably the same box that had been used to hold lost keys since the 1950s. I was told there was but one single set of keys in the box.  I took a look, and surprise of all surprises, they were mine! But what a totally weird series of events I thought, that my keys would somehow make it to the street from my office and then to the post office.  I came back to the office, and Betsy said more or less "I told you to look there."  The important thing was that my keys were back.  But how could all this have happened?  The repair man then fessed up. At the end of the day he scooped up his various tools into his bag and went home.  In the morning he found a set of keys in there and had no idea where they had come from, so he took them to the post office. I had placed my keys on a counter not far from his tools, and they likely were swept up with his tools at the end of the day.  Finding them in the street was a cover story because he really had no idea where they came from.  But on discovering the full story, he immediately said what had happened.  There were no bad feelings, we all had a good laugh, and now every time I see him, wherever we are, he asks if I know where my keys are. The moral of this story, besides the obvious one of not losing stuff, is that the tried and true systems developed over the years to address all sorts of things in Borrego Springs still work, and if you lose your keys, make the post office the first place that you go.   Read more
Where the Borrego Roam and Palms Thrive Mike McElhatton -
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