Arizona’s infamous flash flooding finally struck us. For the last couple of weeks the monsoon thunderstorms have been hitting all around us but mostly either entirely missing us or just sprinkling a little bit – until Saturday. We’ve had our fair share of severe rain events, but nothing like this one. No neighbors we know remember anything like this ever hitting here!

It dropped massive amounts of water in a very short period of time! All of our water-harvesting earthworks were filled way beyond capacity and overflowed. Most of them were damaged at the overflow points. Several one rock dams and rock mulch rundowns were ripped out entirely. My earthworks have all been done with a shovel so they are relatively small. This is the best way to gain experience with earthworks. Small failures don’t do serious damage. Large earthwork failures can do lots of damage when all that water is released.

Most of the landscape and many plants were covered in mud. Fortunately, most of our infrastructure was undamaged. The only damage was to the fence. We did capture and infiltrate tons of water into the ground. If it was just the water falling on Sabbatical Ranch, I think we would have been fine. It was all the water coming from neighbors that overwhelmed us. We took a few representative pictures that illustrate the results.

When an “act of God” hits, it reminds you of the weakness and frailty of man and his works. Many people like to live sensuously and glorify themselves or exalt others (Has social media exacerbated this problem?) and yet man in all his pomp and circumstance is like the flower of the field that is here today and gone tomorrow. God is all powerful and eternal. That is a comforting thought in light of world events!