Welcome to the Borrego Springs Ark Project. 🌵💧
For our first post, I wanted to share some of the working maps we've been developing of the Borrego Valley.
These are not meant to be the final word on anything. They're attempts to look at the valley as a living system; mountains, washes, geology, groundwater, vegetation, wildlife, old springs, human settlement and infrastructure all connected rather than treated as separate subjects.
And water seemed like the right place to begin.
Borrego was shaped by water long before any of us arrived here. Rain falling miles away in the surrounding mountains moves through washes, sediments, fractures and underground formations before eventually becoming part of the valley's groundwater system. There are also traces of older landscapes here, springs, mesquite communities, Indigenous water knowledge, historic wells and drainage patterns, that can help us understand what this place was capable of supporting before intensive groundwater pumping changed it.
So we've been asking a simple question:
If we understood how this valley naturally collected, moved, stored and protected water, what could we restore?
These maps are part hydrology, part systems thinking and part exploration. We're looking at recharge corridors, watersheds, aquifer relationships, historical water features, vegetation, potential restoration areas and places where relatively small interventions might produce larger ecological benefits.
But this group is about much more than our maps.
I want to hear from the people who actually live here.
If you garden here, keep horses, chickens or other animals, work with native plants, know where water used to stand after storms, remember an old spring or well, understand local geology, build solar systems, collect rainwater, restore habitat, hike the washes, study history, or simply notice things about this desert that other people overlook, your knowledge belongs in this conversation.
Post your projects. Post your gardens. Post your animals. Post old photographs and maps. Post something you're trying to build.
Ask questions.
Tell us where our maps are wrong. Tell us what you've seen.
The goal isn't for one person to have all the answers.
It's to begin putting the pieces back on the same table.
Because a desert isn't empty land. It's a living system operating on a different clock.
And maybe if enough of us learn to read it together, we can help Borrego thrive for a very long time.
🌵 #BorregoSprings #Ark Project Building a Living #DesertRestoration Together.
Companion video: Borrego Valley Ghost Water Maps, TikTok @creationshq 2026-10-01 (69s, 12 map plates, soundtrack unidentified, see video-song-log).