the individual property owners to get the money back, evennthough they may have acquired the land after the damagenwas done by someone else. Which brings us back to Burke’snflies of a summer. “Unmindful of . . . what is due to theirnposterity, [the temporary possessors and life-renters] [w]ouldnact as if they were the entire masters.” Some of the pioneersncould be right messy. They were on the way elsewhere,ntoward something over the horizon. Perhaps more land,nmore water, more gold, even something intangible, boundless.nAfter all, shouldn’t a man’s reach exceed his grasp? Onnthe way, however, the scene sometimes resembles thenaftermath of recent barbarians whizzing down the interstate.nWe are told repeatedly that the earth is anfinite system, with finite resources, but we arenreminded by bumper stickers on the backs ofnWinnebagos and Airstreams, “We’re spendingnour children’s inheritance.”ndumping McDonald’s portable, disposable dinner servicesnfor ten. Nowadays nature is something to push against, tonmove around, get out of the way, get on top ofnThere is hardly any way to talk for long about the.nAmerican West, or certainly about the Arkansas RivernValley, without the subject of water and irrigation comingnup. Water is on everybody’s mind because there isn’t muchnof it. Taking a look at what’s happened with water in Kansasnand Colorado sheds a little light on the way we do things innthe modern world. When the wagons were rolling westnalong the Santa Fe Trail, they stayed as close as wasnreasonable to the Arkansas: up on solid ground for thenwagons but near enough to fill the barrels with water. If theyntook a short cut at some place like Cimarron Crossing, theynhad to get to the next water on the Cimarron River or dienfrom thirst; they also ran a much higher risk of encounteringnIndians. But most of these people were just trying to getnthrough the Great American Desert and on west of thenRockies where they wouldn’t have to worry about water sonmuch. They left wagon tracks (some are still on a friend ofnmine’s farm around Deerfield, Kansas), and they left mostnof the water.nAfter the Civil War, there was great excitement aboutnsettling the plains. The railroad magnates back East toutednthe plains as a potential Garden of Eden, another one ofnthose abstractions imposed by one world on another. Therenweren’t enough people in the US to move matters along asnbriskly as the magnates wanted, so drummers were sent overnto Russia and Germany to recruit. No one had paid anynattention to Powell about the inadequacy of quarter-sectionnfarms, and consequently great numbers of families failed.nBut some hardy, lucky souls endured.nOne way they did it was by using ditch irrigation. This gotngoing in the I870’s and hit its stride in the I880’s. Morenthan 400 miles of canals and ditches were built in GardennCity, Kansas. To be effective, ditch irrigatiorT’^quiresndiverting the flow of water several miles above the land to ben14/CHRONICLESnnnirrigated, at the headgates, and then needs a two- tonthree-foot fall. This works out fine for the valley in easternnColorado and western Kansas, where the Arkansas fallsnabout eight feet per mile. The canals can arc their waynthrough the farms and be released through smaller gates atneach field.nBut ditch irrigation had its problems early on. By the endnof the I880’s, cyclical drought and increased use of thenArkansas had resulted in the river going completely dry innwestern Kansas. If there was little snowmelt and rain for thatnyear, the drain on the system ended up at roughly zero.nDitch irrigation has a long tradition, dating back at least tonthe cradle of civilization in the Middle East, and was used bynthe American Indians in the West long before the homesteadersngot to Kansas. But it has never really been withoutnproblems, one of the greatest being increased salinization ofnthe land. The farming communities along the Tigris andnEuphrates rivers and the Hopi in the Southwest either diednout or moved on when this happened.nWhen the center-pivot pump came into being andnproliferated, an entirely new element was put into thenequation of the river. Water is pumped from severalnhundred feet in the aquifer below, and is moved verynefficientiy down a long distribution system, which is onnwheels. A whole quarter section can be watered in about 24nhours. The water being used is fossil water, and that’s a lotnlike topsoil. It takes a long time to accumulate and when it’sngone, it’s gone.nA lot of people are on the farmers’ case for center-pivotnirrigation —a lot of people who live in town, but alsondry-land farmers and ditch irrigators in the valley. In onenwater district comprising 13 counties in western Kansas, thenKansas Water Office has predicted that in 50 years, thengroundwater level in the Cimarron basin will drop 79npercent, and in the Arkansas basin, 49 percent. The ditchnirrigators are mad because they claim the dropping waternlevel is affecting the volume of flow in the river. Before anyncenter-pivot pumping started, the river sometimes down-cutnenough to pick up flow from the aquifer itself The peoplenover at Cheyenne Bottoms refuge are mad because therenoften isn’t enough water to divert for the thousands of birdsnthat use the refuge. (I myself am mosfly confounded to seenhow any thoughtful vision of nature could have averted thenadvent of center-pivot irrigation. What was more traditionalnthan digging a well to get water for your farm?) ‘nOnce the evidence started rolling in that more was goingnon than merely pumping water out from under your ownnland, then a different kind of problem emerged. Increasingly,nthe expensive equipment required by modern “agribusiness”nmeant nobody wanted to stop once all that money hadnbeen invested. Bringing up greed and posterity at that pointnwas like a canary singing in a wind storm. Which is partiy tonsay that we’re never going to get it just right. That’s annEdenist notion — getting it just right, or immanentizing theneschaton, as the Eric Voegelin T-shirts say.nWhat is to be done? In the case of the irrigators, as soonnas they pay off their $50,000-per-rig notes at the bank, theynwill have to set them over on the back 40 and let ’em rust,nbecause the cost of the gas to run the wells at greater depthsnwill serve as a limit. But that kind of virtue is like bragging onnyour virginity when you ain’t been asked. Wendell Berry hasn