This is the most enticing ditch in the North Valley (and that’s saying something)

This ditch’s siren song has called to me for years.

I first noticed the ditch along Guadalupe Trail when we were buying a house. We looked at a home nearby. All these years later, I have no memory of the house, but I never forgot that ditch.

Forest closures have reduced our hiking options to the bosque and the ditches, and after reading David Ryan’s book “The Gentle Art of Wandering,” I was inspired to make the Guadalupe Trail ditch’s acquaintance.

When we stepped onto the ditch at its crossing with Griegos, only one side offered a narrow path.

As the ditch widened, it wound by funky old houses and soaring modernist cathedrals of light.

Irrigated fields opened up, offering glimpses of the mesa and mountains.

This ditch boasts one of the biggest cottonwoods I have ever encountered. Its trunk had to be 15 feet in diameter.

This ditch also boasts the most ducklings I have ever encountered. We saw three duck families. One family huddled together on the ditch’s concrete lip; the two bravest  ducklings tiptoed down the slope into the water, and the rest followed.

We came to a crossroads behind the Unser Museum, only to discover that the magical mystery ditch ran smack into a large ditch we’d used weekly for years to access the Flying Star Cafe from our old house.

We crossed the familiar ditch and kept going. The chatter of ducks and the breeze gave way to the sounds of traffic. Our new ditch route was as wide and tree-lined as the main boulevard in my Southern hometown, running right next to Montano.

The path led us right to the river. A roaring ditch gave the illusion of abundant water.

We walked out to the overlooks on the Montano Bridge, which I’d never crossed on foot. Swallows swarmed overhead.

As we walked back east on the bridge, we saw that no more than a few inches of water covered the sandbar below. The Rio Grande could run dry through the city as soon as this month.

In the bosque, we spotted a mountain bluebird at 5,000 feet.

Maybe the dry conditions on the mountain exiled her, too.

Hike length: 3.2 miles

Difficulty: easy

Trail traffic: heavy at the bridge, light to moderate elsewhere

Wildlife spotted and/or heard: starling, mountain bluebird, ducks, violet-green swallows, barn swallows, cows, roosters, chickens, butterflies, dragonflies, nuthatches, spotted towhee