CONTROLLING EROSION

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Sound dismal? It is! Yet this is exactly what is happening to thousands of small watersheds around the country. You should be aware of this process, but if your land has a few gullies, please don't freak out. Gullies can be stopped, and even if the "vicious cycle" has begun, you can do a lot to reverse it. That's what this article is about: how to stop erosion without a lot of money, bulldozers, or a detachment from the Corps of Engineers.

So far I've given you a model of a typically eroding watershed, which should help you to conceptualize what's happening on your land. If all you're going to do is think about erosion, you can stop here. But if you're going to do something about it, you'll need a gutlevel feeling for how erosion is happening on your land. This feeling, more than anything you read, will tell you where to plant, where to mulch, where to build check dams, and where to stay out of the way. It'll prevent you from building a matchstick structure to stop a raging torrent, and it'll save you the trouble of building a Hoover Dam to control a trickle.

In short, you've got to get wet! You've got to go out in the rain, lie belly down on your meadows, squish soil and mud through your fingers, look at the color of your water, and poke at the sides of your gullies to see how solid they are. Water is amazing stuff, and to see what it does, you've got to get intimately acquainted with it.

A firsthand understanding of how your land is (or isn't) eroding will have its side benefits. It'll get you out in the rain, which is sort of magical in its own right. It will also give you an appreciation for the strength, determination, and beauty of the erosion process. If you are going to fight erosion, it's much better to fight a beautiful enemy that you admire rather than an ugly enemy you hardly know.

One more thing. The Soil Conservation Service is an excellent ally in fighting erosion. You can find it by looking in the phone book under U.S. Government, Department of Agriculture. I've called upon these people for various meadow, forest, stream, and gully problems. They have sent me (free!) grassland experts, stream experts, and soil engineers — persons who knew their subject well and who gave me not only advice but usable advice at that. My own good experiences with the Soil Conservation Service may have been accidental, but by all means give it a try.

FIGHTING EROSION WITH PLANTS

Of structures and plants. Later on, I'll explain how to build structures that will stop erosion and hold soil together. Building these structures can be fun, like playing with an oversized erector set, but please don't get hung up on them. The Army Corps of Engineers seems to view erosion-control structures as monuments, and in many places its cement bulwarks are even more prominent and obtrusive than the original erosion. Don't make that mistake. The structures I recommend are merely temporary, even rinky-dink, devices to hold the soil together until a permanent vegetative cover can get established.

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