About three in the afternoon, they went over the continental divide. Sam asked Dorp what was going to happen next. 

“Up to now, Sam, you’ve seen water in nature. Soon, you’ll see water, nature and humans working together. We’re nearing a water-powered electrical plant AND a multi-state irrigation system. Both irrigation and power generation start with the snow on this mountain, Mount Elbert, the highest peak in Colorado. At high altitudes, snow begins to accumulate while you’re still sweating, playing baseball on Labor Day. That same snow may not completely melt until the next 4th of July.” 

“This is a big Mountain. I have a joke. Why don’t mountains get cold? “ 

“I don’t know, Sam. Why don’t mountains get cold?” 

“Because they wear their snowcaps. Hey! Look at all the big rocks sitting loose on top of this mountain. 

Some are bigger than my dad. I didn’t know that mountains had loose rocks on them.” 

Dorp spoke like a tour guide: “They do on level spots like this. Quite a sight, no? This mountain is a 14er, as mountain aficionados would say. That means it’s at least 14,000 feet tall. Mt. Elbert is in the state of Colorado, which was once part of the Louisiana Purchase, bought from France in 1803. Mt. Elbert was the biggest mountain that America owned at the time, though the native inhabitants had known about it for a long time. The snowmelt that comes down the east side of Mt. Elbert in the spring becomes a part of the Arkansas River. It’s about to rain. Let’s see where that puts us.” 

“Whoa cowboy,” Sam interrupted, “Why is a river in Colorado called the Arkansas River?” ­­­­­­­­­­­

“Sam, the Arkansas River was first spotted by white men where it empties into the Mississippi River. That is in what is now the state of Arkansas. The name ‘Arkansas’ has to do with a native tribe that lived near the river where the white man first saw it. So, they named it the Arkansas River. The Arkansas River actually begins here near Leadville, Colorado and empties into the Mississippi River, about 1,500 river-miles away. Sam was confused, “Wait! You said the Arkansas River flows from Colorado, which is west to East. I thought rivers flowed from north to south. What gives?” 

“Generally speaking, yes, water flows toward the equator. In the northern hemisphere, that means north to south. But water flows downhill, no matter what direction ‘downhill’ happens to be, Sam. In this case, it can be from west to east too. 

Okay Sam: time to get wet, so to speak. We’re going into the river and go downstream to see if we can become irrigation water. This will be like a ride in the water park for you. That is, if we’re not pulled into the underflow.” 

“What is ‘underflow?” 

Dorp explained: “All moving waters lose part of their water into the ground they flow over. If they flow over rocks or concrete, the loss is minimal, into the cracks. If the water flows over ground with a clay in the soil, the ground can become saturated and seal up pretty well. However, in arid areas, where the water is needed most, the ground is often very sandy, which makes it porous like the beach. It drinks up a lot of water. 

“Down; it percolates into the water table.” 

“Is that like an aquifer?” ­­­­­­­­­­ 

“It can be, Sam, depending on its size. Every aquifer is a water table, but not every water table is an aquifer. 

A water table is a warehouse of water hidden underground.” 

The vapors over the mountain condensed and Sam and Dorp became rain. They dropped into Mt. Elbert Forebay, 

a manmade catchment (artificial lake) built to hold water for the Mt. Elbert Power Plant. The water is discharged from the Forebay down to the powerhouse where two Francis turbines turn electrical generators that create 100 Mega-watts of electricity each. These turbines are machines that create electricity from water. A different kind of turbine takes power from a jet engine and turns it into air power and makes planes fly. 

“What is going on here? Sam asked. If were supposed to be generating electricity, we just wasted a lot of electricity getting pumped uphill back into the same lake we came out of, didn’t we?” 

After a few trips up and down ‘the turbine trail’, Dorp and Sam were pushed into Twin Lake, and then into the Arkansas River nearby. While they were traveling down the river, they saw solar heat and wind pick up other molecules of water from the river and became airborne. 

About 100 miles to the southeast of the power plant on the Arkansas River is a town called Canon City, Colorado. The ten miles of the river upstream of Canon City (pronounced 'Canyon City') is a stretch of river called the Royal Gorge. Sam and Dorp made it to the Royal Gorge and were being churned around when they hit a large rock in the stream and were splashed onto the bow of a river raft filled with weekend-adventurers. That stretch of river is a magnet for tourism. 

“Wow!” Sam said. “Now I know what it’s like being in a washing machine.” 

“Yes, I’ve had a few trips through washing machines, and usually find it quite agitating,” Dorp deadpanned. 

“Why is the water so rough here, Mr. Dorp??” 

“Gravity, a narrow riverbed, and big rocks make for the kind of ride we have on this stretch of the river. 

"Look up Sam, see the bridge coming up above us? That is the Royal Gorge Bridge that so many people come to see. 

You get to see it from the river."

Suddenly, the raft nosed-dived into the water and sprayed everyone on board and sent Sam and Dorp back into the river. They went downstream. The river calmed down near Canon City, because the river widened out there, making for a gentler, slower ride.   They traveled down the river for many, many miles.

After a few days, they neared Garden City, Kansas. They were pulled out of the river by a diversion weir and sent down an irrigation intake, a water off-ramp in the river. They parted ways with the Arkansas River. 

A diversion weir is a low obstruction across a river or stream that raises the level on the river slightly at that point. This allows water to be diverted into a canal or channel to irrigate fields. They went into a deep, wide canal. As they moved down the canal, there were ‘head gates’ that diverted the ‘ditch water’ as it is called, into smaller canals that fed directly into nearby farms, or into secondary feeder ditches that might travel for miles before reaching the proper field. 

Both were quiet for a while, then Sam spoke “I’ve been thinking; plants need water, and I guess the farmers have to pay for this water. How do they know how much water they need?” 

“Good question, Sam. Each type of crop needs a certain amount of water at each phase in its life. The amount of water each crop needs also varies according to soil type, amount of wind and the sunlight the plant gets. These calculations are called 'transevaporation rates'. This is how much water transpires out of a plant as it grows, plus how much water evaporates out of the soil during the growing season. Even the type of irrigation affects the amount of water needed, because some methods of irrigation are more efficient than others. 

Long story short, it is calculated in acre-feet.” 

“What is acre-feet, Mr. Dorp? I didn’t know land could walk.” 

“Bad Joke, Sam. I have a farm joke for you. How do dairy farmers count their herds? With a COWculator. 

And how do they know which day it is? With a COWlendar. 

Anyway, the US uses the acre as a way of measuring land. An acre is 43,560 square feet, about the size of a football field, without the end zones. Imagine a football field covered with water, one foot deep. That would be 1 acre-foot of water, which is 325,861 gallons of water.” 

“Those are terrible jokes, and that would also be one very wet football field,” said Sam. 

“While it may seem like a lot of water, Sam, absorb this: Each acre of corn in around Kearney, Nebraska needs a little over 2 acre-feet of water to make a crop, whereas alfalfa in parts of California can require over 4 acre-feet of water to grow. 

This shows the need for accurate formulas and calculations, especially since about 15% of US croplands are irrigated.” 

“Then why do they grow alfalfa instead of corn, if corn takes less water?” 

“This has to do with the soil type and other factors. Alfalfa doesn’t need to be replanted every year, and it is used to feed milk cows. California has a lot of cows. and would need more hay. Here we go, we’re going to be diverted through another headgate. Let’s see if this is where we go to work or if this is a long-distance supply canal.” 

They slipped though the headgate as easily as chocolate milk though a boy’s straw. Dorp went on to explain more about irrigation. First, there are two sources for the water; surface water brought in by a ditch company, or underground water pumped out of an aquifer. Irrigation methods include surface irrigation, as water is applied directly to the surface of the dirt, either by flooding the area, like an alfalfa field, or row irrigation, where water is sent down prepared trenches between the row crops. The second major type is sprinkler irrigation, accomplished though overhead sprinklers, which are fed with underground or reservoir water, brought from an irrigation canal. The very last type is micro-irrigation, which uses tubing laid either on the surface or underground to water the plants. 

“Which type of irrigation is the best?” Sam asked. 

“That depends on what types of crops the farmer is raising, the source of the water, and how much money the farmer has. 

Some systems require less labor to operate but are very expensive to buy in the beginning. Irrigating with siphon tubes is a lot of work, but it’s less expensive than a pivot sprinkler system.” 

Dorp and Sam then hit a head gate and were put in field ditch at the upper end of a corn field. They were going to irrigate corn; or so they thought. As they poured down the ditch with hooptillions of other dorps (hooptillions is my word), they saw that the farmer had set a temporary dam made of plastic tarping attached to a metal pole. The pole lay across the top of the ditch and the tarp hung down and was secured at the bottom with a few shovels of dirt. As the water filled the ditch behind the plastic dam, the farmer began ‘setting the tubes’. The tubes, nearly as long as the farmer was tall, were already laid out in a row for the so the farmer could prime them quickly. As the ditch filled behind the dam, the farmer put the long side of the double-bend siphon tube in the ditch water and made special moves with his hands to get the water to come out the other end of the tube. He then quickly laid that end of the tube in the row lower than the level of the ditch water. Gravity kept the water flowing through the field, between the rows of corn. The lower the siphon tube was from the level of the ditch water, the faster the water flowed. 

The more tubes used, the lower the water in the ditch flowed, which meant less water flowed through each tube. The tubes had to be adjusted so the water flow would balance amongst the rows. After all the tubes were set, it took a couple of trips down the head of the field to get the flow ‘just right.’ Sam and Dorp sat in the final supply ditch for a while, then were sucked up through one of the first tubes he set, close to the temporary dam. The ride through the tube was like being at a water park. 

“Sam, we’re flowing down the field now. It looks like we’re going to make it about to the end the row. Let’s see if we are absorbed by the corn or soaked into the ground and evaporate into the air. Either way, we’re off on a new adventure.” 

The adventure was more than they imagined. While they were sitting in a little pool of water at the end of the row, a barn swallow swooped down for a drink and took Sam and Dorp off with her. 

 “Well. I wonder where this will lead us. But, not to worry Sam. Even if we go clear through the bird, it takes far less time to go through a bird than through a horse.” 

“That’s small consolation,” Sam moaned. “I guess I’m destined to be bird poop on someone’s windshield.” 

They slid down the bird’s throat, and past a sack in the bird’s throat. Sam asked what that sack in the throat was. 

Dorp explained, “That’s the bird’s crop. It is a storage sack in the throat. Small birds may be eaten by other creatures. 

These weaker birds usually eat seeds and insects. A seed bird can fly into a dangerous area and gather more food than it can digest right away. This food goes into the bird’s crop. The bird flies back to safety, where its crop will gradually push the food into the stomach where it will be digested. The first chamber in the stomach is called the proventriculus. It is the chamber where acid is released and food is broken down. 

The second part of the stomach is called the ventriculus, or gizzard, as it is commonly called.” 

“Oh, so the grain crop goes into the bird’s crop? HA! Wait…Oh! I love fried chicken gizzards,” Sam gushed. Grandma Tessie makes them whenever I visit. She batters and fries them like regular chicken. Even dad asks for them now when we visit.” 

“The gizzard is a very specialized piece of biology. The bird ingests grit, sand, or small pebbles and they go into the gizzard. Then when the bird eats seeds, grains, or even hard-shelled bugs, which are tough to digest, the gizzard acts like a grinding mill and pulverizes the seeds and grains so the intestines can absorb nutrients from them.” 

Dorp and Sam made their way through the barn swallow’s digestive tract, and found themselves not on a windshield, but deposited in a nearby wheat field, where a light rain washed them into the sandy soil and they were absorbed by the wheat plant. They became part of the wheat crop, which holds 10-15% moisture. 

 This happened a week before harvest time. They were harvested by a huge combine, hauled to the mill, milled into flour, bagged and sold to a grocery distributor. Dorp and Sam wound up in a grocery store in Guymon, Oklahoma.

dorpwet.com