The Zanja

I posted this as part of a series of iPhone photos on Facebook this morning, with the album title, "The Zanja at Flood Stage." I also uploaded them to Picasa if you want to see them all. My rain gauge at home has measured 10 1/2 inches of rain in the last four days and we were pounded with three inches overnight, which contributed to the torrent in the photos.

For non-Redlands people, the Mill Creek Zanja is a 12-mile irrigation canal built by the local Serrano Indians in the 1800s to divert water from Mill Creek to Loma Linda to support agriculture. Locals affectionately (and erroneously) call it "the Zankee." The word means "ditch" in the Serrano's native language.

Because the City of Redlands manages the water upstream now, the Zanja is dry most of the year, with an occasional seasonal trickle. My son Dean commented on Facebook today that he recalls playing in it when it was a dry ditch, but never seeing it like this. He also wrote, "Looks fun!", but the thought of being swept away, then getting trapped by debris under a bridge downsteam made me keep my distance. The swiftness and power of the water was incredible to behold.

The Zanja flows west alongside (and under) Sylvan Blvd., which is the southern border for most of the University of Redlands campus, including the fraternity houses you see in these shots. There was a similarly huge storm when I was a freshman there in late 1968 or early 1969 and I recall running across flooded Sylvan Blvd. to get to Wallichs Theatre for a lecture, slipping on the sidewalk and landing flat on my back. I'll never forget the embarrassment -- or the way the wind was completely knocked out of me. Ouch!

About a year later, while I was a pledge for the Kappa Sigma Sigma fraternity (AKA "the Birds"), our pledge project was to build a retaining wall to protect the frat house yard and a palm tree that was nearly lost in the big storm.

My fraternity brother Barry Rands, an engineering major and now a professional engineer in San Luis Obispo, designed the wall, complete with wire anchors deep in the ground within the yard. Many years later, when the wood finally rotted out, it was replaced, but the design is the same. As you can see, the palm tree is still standing:


Over the years, there have been many proposed developments that have threatened the Zanja and there is an ongoing effort by the Redlands Conservancy to preserve it. I hope they do.

After I graduated from the U of R, I rented a small house on Mill Creek Road in Mentone, a couple of miles upstream from here and about 20 feet from the banks of the Zanja. In those days, it was a gentle, flowing stream that ran year-'round, and I would open my bedroom window and listen to it as I fell asleep. It was the best sleep I ever got in my life.

It was during those nights of listening to the Zanja that I wrote the first verse of the only song I have ever written -- and never finished:

I have seen oceans
I've sat beside streams
Heard the love in the river's flow
A thousand time it seems

And every time I find myself
In such a beautiful way
I tell myself I'll sit down here
With her one day and I'll say:

Never, no never again, without you

I also have many fond memories of sitting on the bridge to the frat house in the photo below -- drinking a beer and smoking a joint. But that's a story for another time. Or maybe not.