Down By the River

Two weeks after the bridge ceremony, another chasm was crossed when the Quechan tribal president called Charlie Flynn and proposed that they get to work on the riverfront. Flynn learned of a young landscape architect who had been living in Parker, Arizona, and restoring wetlands on the Colorado River Indian Reservation. So he drove about one hundred miles north of Yuma to visit. The Colorado River Indian Reservation is a dusty moonscape of cactus and red rock. No trees, no grass. In summer, it cooks along at degrees, and you can almost hear the crackle of creosote bush leaves frying in their oil.

When Flynn arrived, a baby-faced man with a long ponytail introduced himself as Fred Phillips. Flynn found him to be practical and passionate about his work. Phillips took Flynn on a tour of his restoration work.

• Obama, Hated Just Because..: A conversation in race relations?
• Share this track:;
• Navigation menu.
• Sadnecessary;
• The Nature of Goodness.
• Fire in the Sea.
• .

Flynn could hardly believe his eyes: Two and a half miles of channels, fringed with rushes and waterfowl, flowed to the main stem of the Colorado. There were four miles of trails and a mesquite-filled park with a swimming area and boat ramp. Phillips assured Flynn that yes, the area had been just as tamarisk-clogged as Yuma when he started, and yes, what had happened here was replicable up and down the Lower Colorado. He had a fascination with the native cultures of the Midwest river valleys and a growing disillusionment with college.

I thought it should be about working with the land instead of imposing our will on it. An elder took him to a backwater that was filled in with tamarisk. There were big cottonwoods, and the river flowed through them. Phillips had no idea where to start. Master planning a thousand acres of restoration? So I just started gathering information. I talked to everyone from tribal elders to the Bureau of Reclamation.

What did this area used to be? What are the problems? What are your ideas?

From the album

I got some aerial photos. I started hiking and canoeing the whole thing. I was sure I was going to die of a rattlesnake bite. Instead Phillips learned one of the key lessons for the Colorado River Basin. One often assumes that restoring natural landscapes is a long, gradual process, but the Colorado River ecosystem is different.

Its native plants evolved amid annual disturbances, and they know how to move fast. Give them some free ground and a little bit of water, and they go for it. The natural communities of the Lower Colorado were degraded, but perhaps the gap between a desiccated system and a flourishing one could be bridged more easily than it seemed. Just find the water, reset the conditions, and let the system heal itself. While camping in his Airstream and working seventy-hour weeks, Phillips devised and implemented a page master plan.

He reconnected an old meander to the river by dredging it, ripped out the tamarisk, and planted native species and kept them on drip irrigation until they could extend their roots to the water table. Amazingly, when wet, the cottonwood roots grew an inch a day.

Phillips also mastered the delicate art of permit applications. In addition to the tribes and the state, he had to convince the Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corp of Engineers, the U. He learned to move between worlds. By the time Charlie Flynn tracked down Phillips, he had restored acres of wetlands along the river. His cottonwoods were thirty-five feet high. The timing was perfect for Flynn and Yuma: Phillips had perfected his techniques and was itching to see what he could do on the rest of the river.

From our watery vantage point, we can see riverbank trails full of bikers and birders. A few hundred yards upriver, we portage over the riverbank and slide our boards into a backchannel Fred has excavated. The sounds of people and roads fall away, and we find ourselves in a sea of cattails.

More by Neil Young

Ducks and white-faced ibis burst from the marsh as we paddle by. Egrets high-step in the shallows and turn orange-pink in the low sunlight. Four hundred acres of the Yuma wetlands have been restored with native species so far; another thousand are planned for restoration. Bird diversity has doubled, and even the Yuma clapper rail, one of the most endangered birds in the Southwest, has returned to the Yuma marsh.

Milky Chance - Down By The River - text, překlad - www.newyorkethnicfood.com

Water was the key, but the city of Yuma had little to spare. Fortunately, wetlands in the Sonoran Desert are not choosy or proud. Phillips rerouted runoff from neighboring lettuce fields, and found another , gallons a day that the city of Yuma used to rinse the sand filters in its water-treatment plant. The wetlands drank it up. In coming years, a garland of green is expected to sprout up and down the Lower Colorado, a beacon to birds and snowbirds alike — all part of a growing realization that, far from being antithetical, ecological and cultural restoration reinforce one another.

In addition to the Yuma wetlands, Phillips is working on a thousand-acre restoration project a few miles upriver, and a smaller one downriver along the Mexican border. Returning to the main stem of the river, Phillips and I visit Sunrise Point Park on the Quechan side, where a medicine wheel and ramada frame the summer solstice sunrise. Traditional Quechan herbs buzz with wild bees. Phillips picks a bundle of white sage, inhales deeply, and holds it to my nose. The usual camphor aromas are leavened with a lemony brightness like a brain tonic.

In a nearby clearing in the willows sits the Elder Village, a cluster of wattle-and-daub huts around a fire pit. That continues to manifest itself. Our Elder Village was built by the community.

We are sorry...

We have our weddings down there, and our Youth Cultural Festival was just held down there. Golding also sees potential economic development in the healthy wetlands. We recently allowed a neighboring tribe to harvest some willow poles so they could make a sweat lodge. Yuma, too, has found its way back to the river. The adobe walls of the Yuma Territorial Prison, where many an outlaw did his time, rise on a bluff across the river.

Farther down the waterfront is the Quartermaster Depot, where the riverboats used to unload.

Both had been neglected state parks for years. The Heritage Area has run them ever since, and the fundraiser is now an annual event. The Words and Music of Neil Young. Retrieved 27 April Decade Lucky Thirteen Greatest Hits.

• Digital Design and Computer Architecture: From Gates to Processors;
• Down By The River Lyrics.
• Irresistible (Deseo) (Spanish Edition);
• Orion Magazine | Down by the River.
• Hinky Dinky Parley-Voo;
• Cuentos y Misterios (Spanish Edition)?

Silver and Gold Greendale Neil Young: A Hippie Dream Special Deluxe. The Best of Crazy Horse — Scratchy: The Complete Reprise Recordings. Neil Young The Rockets. Retrieved from " https: Articles with hAudio microformats All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from September Articles with unsourced statements from January Articles with unsourced statements from July Views Read Edit View history. This page was last edited on 10 October , at By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Blues rock , folk rock , psychedelic rock. Neil Young David Briggs.