No. 255 - Arroyo

Today I will finish the epic journey as depicted in The Passage by Justin Cronin, which I first mentioned in Post No. 159. It was a highly enjoyable novel and I will eagerly anticipate the second installment of this trilogy, which is supposed to come out in 2012.

I read the following sentence on page 742:

They were in a broad, empty valley, and had taken shelter for the night beneath a bridge over a dry arroyo.

Using word association I figured it was some type of body of water, but beyond that I didn't exactly know the meaning or significance of the word. This is probably a gimme for anyone who lives in the southwestern United States. The setting in the book was "in Arizona, near the Utah border."

I learned that an arroyo, also called a wash, is usually a dry creek bed that temporarily fills after a heavy rain. Arroyos can be natural or man-made. The term usually applies to a mountainous desert environment. In many rural communities, arroyos are the principal roads, and in many urban communities they are important multi-use trails for recreation, pedestrian and equestrian travel.

Encyclopedia Britannica had this entry for arroyo: "a dry channel lying in a semiarid or desert area and subject to flash flooding during seasonal or irregular rainstorms. Such transitory streams, rivers, or creeks are noted for their gullying effects and especially for their rapid rates of erosion, transportation, and deposition."