Adventures in Terraforming 1

This is a story about the only thing I learned from HS Geography.

Way back in the 1980s some friends and I went off to see the Leonid meteor shower ('a celestial event' says wikipedia, and so it is) from a place of power called Diamond Head. You know the kind of place I mean ... imposing, spectacular, unusual, a place you'd revere.

We wandered along the beach to the South (Kylie's beach, named after Kylie Tennant) and could see a sandmining operation in the hinterland (rutile mining, to the West) and came to a creek which was intersecting the beach. I say 'intersecting' but what the creek was really doing was eating away the beach. As we watched the bank or dune was falling into the creek and being washed to sea. Sections were sliding away, the bank was being eroded and destroyed.

It just didn't seem right to us children.

So we hove-to, and determined to fight the creek with our boyish enthusiasm and testosterone. Three of us shoveled with our hands, trying to bank up the sand ... with more sand. Of course it washed away as fast as we could dump it. So we set our sights higher and dug with our feet, bringing down half the bank in the process, piling it onto the fast-eroding bank of the creek. Where it washed away as fast as we could pile it. Doubling, redoubling our efforts made no difference. As fast as we could shovel, the creek carried our new dike away.

Eventually, common sense and the noon-day sun made us see the futility of our war on moving water. The creek had won, it would always win, it would work ceaslessly to undermine the dune. The beach would inevitably wash away. It was history, that dune.

Then I looked at it dispassionately, and saw that the creek was curved, its outer curve was the cutting edge, and deeper than the side opposite our bank. I'd seen that before ... in HS Geography. Rivers are dynamic things, and over time they whip about. Their outer curves are deeper and faster than their inner curves and they take material from the channels they dig to deposit on the next inner curve.

What we needed to do to protect the dune was to dig a channel in the opposing side! We had a go at it, and it seemed to work, but the creek is far more powerful than even three gung-ho guys on a mission.

Then I saw ... the long flat rock lying nearby, less than half a meter long, with a definite airfoil shape! I reasoned that by placing the larger side lower we would get something like the equivalent of lift, but pointing down, by action of water over the surfaces, thus digging a channel and redirecting water away from the dune. We placed it properly, and went off to do something else.

The Leonid shower was pretty. I don't remember much about it, but there were lots of lights. We slept in the car (the things you can do when you're young) and woke up hungry next morning. Then, for some reason, we traipsed down to the creek to see what'd happened.

The creek had rotated nearly 90° about the point where we'd placed the airfoil (waterfoil?) and was no longer touching the dune bank. I was gobsmacked. We had used the nature of flowing water, and the passive properties of a simple rock, to make tons of water move itself. I have always considered this experience a metaphor for general problem solving.

Another possible interpretation is: if you have a problem you can't solve, try dropping a rock on it.

So we went to Laurieton to drink beer and eat cheese, feeling like we'd made this.

Update: One of my co-terraformers snapped a recent this photo of the creek. It's still there, so we didn't move it too far.