Fresh Ideas: Water in the desert

Two floods have traversed our front yard in the 15 years we’ve lived in American Flat, on the Virginia Range’s south slope. Here, deeply eroded canyons finger out into foothills, and water eventually reaches the Carson River.Our house occupies an earthen rise on the floor of our canyon, a steep, deep cut that flattens out into our island. The 1870s Baltimore Mine tunneled into the west bank’s hillside, dumped its fill into the ravine, making a flat area around the tunnel’s mouth. A sprin