the desert is no lady, C-41 print film, driving across
New Mexico, January 2003, photo © 2003-2009 by
QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Yesterday our blog friend from Seeded Earth was reading her journal from last October and posting snippets on Twitter. One journal entry caught Liz’s eye:
Is a wash different from an arroyo, or a gully, or a gulch? We drove over a wash (looks like a dry creek bed) called Car Wash. Really. True.
The entry reminded Liz of last May when we went to see Patricia Hampl and purchased the book Home Ground – Language for an American Landscape. She tweeted back to Bo that she would look up the words arroyo, gully, gulch and wash.
This morning when I got up, Liz was placing Post-it notes on those sections of the book before driving off to work. Curious, I thumbed through the bookmarks and started reading. Our Word Of The Day multiplied to four. I was so fascinated by the subtle differences that I was inspired to post excerpts from the Home Ground definitions on red Ravine.
So is a wash different from an arroyo, or a gully, or a gulch? Before you read the answer, what are your definitions? They are powerful, visual words that might even make good Writing Practices. Write one of the words at the top of your page — 10 minutes, Go!
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arroyo
The Spanish word arroyo means “large creek.” Often steep-walled, an arroyo may be flat-bottomed sand or laden with boulders and gravel. Arroyuelo and arroyito are the diminutive forms and mean “rill” or “brook.” Arroyos are ephemeral streams, carrying water only briefly during such events as spring runoff of the summer monsoons. In the American Southwest the words arroyo and wash are sometimes used interchangeably, as are arroyo seco (meaning “dry”) and dry wash — though the English terms often describe shorter or abbreviated water courses stretching less than a mile and not necessarily part of a specific arroyo.
–Arturo Longoria from his home ground, The Texas brushlands, Zapata County, Starr County, Texas
gulch
In the western United States, gulch is a word for a small ravine. Deeper than a gully, generally narrow and steep sided, shallower than a canyon. Miners often found gold or other minerals concentrated in a gulch’s swash channel. The Blue Cloud Gulch and the Old Dominion Gulch in Montana each yielded gold, silver, and copper for many years. Artifacts of ancient civilizations are also sometimes exposed in a gulch. In Grand Gulch, Utah, for instance, the Anasazi left their mark in red sandstone. In the profusion of gifts offered by gulches, none was more spectacular than the one discovered by a miner in New Mexico in 1987. He saw the tip of tusk in a gulch; the remains were later identified as those of a Columbian mammoth. Public and scientific interest brought about a full excavation of this site, now known as the Dry Gulch Mammoth Site, exposing a grail of bones.
–Elizabeth Cox from her home ground, Chattanooga, Tennessee
gully
A channel worn in the earth by a torrent of water carving out a deep ditch is called a gully. Gully erosion happens after a rill, a high-velocity rush of water, has moved large amounts of soil along a depression or drainage line. As water wears away the land, the rill — the geomorphic feature — becomes a gully; cutting farther down, the headlong water makes a gulch, until the cellar doors open into a canyon. Geographers distinguish between gullies, washes, and arroyos on the one hand, and cañadas on the other, according to the materials involved. Cañadas — like cañoncitos — slice through bedrock. Arroyos and washes cut through flat layers of valley deposits; and gullies and gulches erode hill-slope materials.
–Elizabeth Cox from her home ground, Chattanooga, Tennessee
wash
The word wash is used to describe areas where subtle contours allow water to flow, or “wash,” from elevated sites to lower zones, like the bottoms of canyons or along gullies or next to ponds. Carrizo Wash in Arizona and Hunters Wash in New Mexico are examples of washes that run for many miles. A dry streambed or creek is often called a dry wash. In some areas of the American Southwest the words arroyo and arroyo seco are used interchangeably with wash and dry wash. In Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey writes: “Streambeds are usually dry. The dry wash, dry gulch, arroyo seco. Only after a storm do they carry water and then briefly–a few minutes, a couple of hours.”
–Arturo Longoria from his home ground, The Texas brushlands, Zapata County, Starr County, Texas
-partial excerpts from Home Ground — Language for an American Landscape, published by Trinity University Press
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-For more information on the Home Ground Project or to purchase your copy of Home Ground — Language for an American Landscape, important links can be found in the post and Comment conversation at Home Ground — Back In The Saddle.
Gratitude to the writers of Home Ground, to Bo from Seeded Earth for asking the question, and to Liz for responding. Together they became the inspiration for this Writing Topic.
-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
-related to post: Midwest Poets & Writers — When Can You Call A Place Home?
Subtle differences indeed. And I think with time some that started out and were named as arroyos have begun to change and dry out, making more of a gulch!
That sounds like a neat book to have handy.
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Thanks to you and Liz and the book Home Ground, I now have a fairly firm hold on the distinctions of wash, gully, gulch, and arroyo. What a great book to have as a reference book in the home. I followed the link and read all about the book ( I somehow missed that post and I don’t think I miss many) and I definitely need that in my library, too.
Amazing how writing practices come up, isn’t it? You carve out a special time and sit down ready to write, yet not hit upon a topic that lights a fire. Then serendipity plays a role, and fascinating material is written.
I put an addendum in my journal, noting the different definitions. Next year when I re-read all of my October journals, I won’t have that question to ask again. Thanks!
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Wow, those are subtle differences. I’d do best having someone take me out on a tour and point out the differences so I can see them, because as soon as I think I have one pictured, I read the next (and then they throw in cañadas and cañoncitos) and forget it.
BTW, I wanted to say that I love that photo. It has a stark crispness that goes well with the image. I can feel the dry cold in that photo. Did you scan it to get it into digital format, or did you get it converted by some other means?
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I read your note on FB and instantly thought of “Home Ground,” which I got a few years ago (Lopez & others had a local reading.) . I love it. Thank you for reminding me. And it is a glorious photo. Stunning.
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Corina, I have to keep rereading the definitions to get a clear picture in my mind. It seems like these words are all often used interchangeably these days. Arroyos drying out to make gulches — that makes sense!
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Deb, thanks for stopping by. Cool that you have Home Ground, too. I want the whole world to buy it! Such a cool book. I like that it’s filled with different writers, writing about the land, and their home ground.
You saw a local reading with Barry Lopez in your part of the world; we saw a reading here in Minnesota with Patricia Hampl. We can all access each other through connections to the land.
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Bo, thank you for the inspiration! I love that you were going through and reading your old journals. Sometimes when I do that, it inspires me in my present work and sends me a new direction. Thanks for checking out the book links, too. It’s a great book.
If you come back to this post, I’d be curious if you’d want to share some things you might have learned from revisiting your journals. What happens with me, at times, is that I can’t believe I was the person writing that entry or taking that photograph or drawing that sketch.
It’s strange but I often feel more creative in my old journals than I am now. In reality, I think it’s just taken on a different form.
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ybonesy, thanks. I’ve enjoyed going back through some of these old photos. I’m in the New Mexico batch of C-41 film currently. Haven’t even started going back through Kodachromes from when I lived in Montana. I can’t wait to get to those.
I love the grain of film. The texture. You asked about how I got the photos into digital form. The ones I’m posting now are from when I began my transition from film to digital, probably around the first time I owned a desktop computer.
Back then, I was reluctant to switch from a film to digital camera. I tended to be “old school” then. But now, of course, we have red Ravine and digital has made our lives so much easier with posting online.
Anyway, during the transition from film to digital, I was still taking film shots and I started having the places where I got my film developed put the photos on a disk. I gave them instructions for “Do Not Cut” negatives and stopped getting whole sets of prints.
The “Do Not Cut” instructions meant that they kept the negative film in its whole form, a spool, which they then sleeved and put back into the plastic film canister. I then had a negative roll and a disk for the computer. If I wanted prints, it was less expensive to order them off the negative roll than from cut up negative strips.
Probably more than you wanted to know! But I’ll probably do the same thing today when I shoot film again. Liz and I bought a couple of second hand Canon film cameras last weekend that we want to try out. It will be a real test to slow down again and take a few rolls of film!
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Well I wrote down my ideas about each before reading… I have three out of four pretty close to precise but gulch eluded me! If I had remembered the gold mining piece I would have gotten it correct… rockier!
Thanks for the education… now does someone want to tackle Mesa vs. Butte? We had this conversation years ago while hiking in Chaco Canyon. After a long intellectual series of guesses we were gravely disappointed to look in the Webster’s to find it was very simple and not nearly as complex as we had made it!
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I’m not surprised you knew the differences, Michelle, and you’re right, the gold mining was a good hint on the gulch. So does a mesa act more as an unending table–i.e., tall and flat for miles–were as the butte has sides–tall and flat but protruding out of the lower floor?
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Deb, glad you stopped over. I need to pick up a copy of Home Ground. I love Barry Lopez’s writings on winter and landscape. I’ve never heard him read or seen him in person. I imagine him as a sort of shaman, longish hair, tanned skin. Maybe I’m romanticizing him. He’s probably a lot older than I envision him to be.
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That reminds me of one of my last rides with my Cajun grandfather in Louisiana. As we drove through the countryside, I asked him, “Popo, what’s the difference between a creek and a bayou?” I asked this because some little bridge crossings stated we were crossing creeks, and other stated we were crossing bayous. His reply, in his quiet manner, “Well…a bayou is a little bigger than a creek.” I had to be satisfied with answer. I guess if you live in bayou country, you would be able to tell the difference.
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Reading these last comments reminds me that part of what the book Home Ground is about is what many of you are mentioning — we once lived a lot closer to the land and knew the subtle differences between land forms based on their names. It was how people navigated and got around. Those names ended up on maps which also helped people navigate.
Today, many of the terms have become synonymous, even though there are differences in the land forms. I remember when Liz and I were driving back from Bismarck, North Dakota one year and we took the back roads part of the way.
It was sunset, foggy, and we were geocaching and driving through rural areas with “Slough” as part of the name. One after another, I had never seen that word come up as often as it did in that part of North Dakota. I learned firsthand what a slough was. And it was one of the words that Patricia Hampl read that night. She asked that we toss words out at the end and that was one of the ones we gave her. It happened to be in the book.
I’ll have to look up bayou, creek, mesa, butte, canyon. I’m really curious now if they are in the book.
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QM, I have a lot of my journals marked by months and years on the covers. During each month (or if life is way too hectic at least each season) I skim through entries back a year or so. It’s such a simple thing to write a few lines, and it brings back floods of memories – memories I’m sure I couldn’t remember without a few written hints. But it takes only a few words to jog the memory and get the whole scene back. Love that!
Funny how my trip journals have changed through the last few years, and all because of the internet. I’ve only used a computer for the last 3 years (Slow to adapt! I hated giving up film for digital, too!) And I’ve gotten in the habit of writing down any questions that come up as we travel. The best part — I look up the answers via Google when I get home, so I have all kinds of added notes scrawled in the margins. Amazing the things I’ve learned.
I love reading these journals, year after year. Can’t imagine life without a journal!
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Bo, I love that you write down your questions when you travel and look up the answers when you get home. Also like that you Twittered lines from your travel journals. It’s true — a few lines from an old journal bring back a flood of memories.
I don’t keep as detailed journals as I used to. But I do have my writing practices, my haiku, and this blog to chronicle part of the journey. The great thing about travel is that it opens us up to a completely new way of looking at things, at the world, at other people. It’s fresh and everything becomes new for a short time. Away from our everyday routines, we wake up to other ways of seeing. Thanks for stopping by again to comment. And thanks for the inspiration.
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