Though the modern world betrays no doubt of its own sphericity, to the denizens of the Sink the world is unquestionably flat. Having no regular outflow, erosion isn’t given an opportunity to sculpt or slope the land. This leaves gravity—the great leveler—unchecked. Sediment is carried by runoff to the lowest places until the lowest places aren’t so low anymore. The outcome is an extraordinary flatness that seems so profound as to contradict the very curvature of space-time.
A little spillage can go a long way on such a flat floor, and with an impermeable hardpan just beneath, the water cannot be absorbed; it just keeps on spilling out until there’s nowhere left to spill. But not to worry: nearly every stream and slough of the Sink has been channeled and enclosed in levees, so the land tends to remain dry as long as the levees aren’t compromised.
Buck and Sam sometimes played fetch in nearby Peoples Ditch and Cross Creek. The nature of the game varied with the flows. Sometimes they played along the dry creek bed or the ditch bottom. Sometimes Sam sent Buck plunging after a tennis ball or a stick into the cool mountain runoff, and sometimes Sam went in himself.
Peoples Ditch Dam Construction
Before irrigation and other initiatives, the Sink had been a harsh place to farm, and not just because of flooding. Soil salinity, dust storms, and feral cattle and pigs made for chaos and unending frustration.
Before the Southern Pacific Railroad founded Slough City, the area was known as Mussel Slough, a name made infamous by a bloody gunfight between locals and the railroad. Local farmers had founded the town of Grangeville just a few miles away. Grangeville had been a stagecoach stop between Visalia and Stockton, and a hub of industry—one might say, as the irrigation systems that now define the Sink were just being cut into the hardpan.
In 1875, John Muir had tarried at Grangeville after one of his mountain treks to admire the network of canals. A century later, Sam and Buck took to exploring the People’s Ditch. This might have got them in trouble with a local farmer or two had it not been for their connection to the Dorahs. Some folks would even look out for the two. A farmer, a farmer’s wife, or a driver might even give them a lift home after a day’s raft ride down a canal.