Stepping Through High Water

December 1, 2010.  Wednesday.

Situation:  I didn’t mention it yesterday or the day before, but when Moi comes home from hunting, she likes to spend the next two hours drinking whiskey and talking about her day in the woods.  “It can get cold and windy up there in the tree stand,” for example, “sometimes I’ll go down into the hollow, but it’s dark and I get lost there.  Ezra has a blind but I don’t like to go in there.  It’s down on the ground, and that’s the last place I want to be.  Your suppose to be wearing orange and the thing has camouflage around it.  Ezra says there’s not suppose to be any other hunters in the woods, but I’ve seen them in past years.  I was down there today, eating candy, and I could hear the wind around me, everything sounded like a bear walking around.  I was so tired I eventually fell asleep.  I started having this weird dream about an angel named Rachel, and then I woke up to this sound like ‘rrrrr-rrrr- rrrrrr-rrrr.’  I suppose it could’ve been my own snoring that woke me up,” and on and on and on.  This morning Moi wakes me up to warn me that there’s a thunderstorm, flash flooding, possible rotation clouds.  I hear wind howling, rain hitting the roof and running down Moi’s rain chain.  By the time I get up, it looks like the worse of the storm is over, but out our windows you can see where the creek has overflowed its banks.  Moi hasn’t gone hunting because of the weather, but she plans to go out this afternoon if it gets better.  I’m eager to go out and look at the creek, and I keep checking out the window to try to tell if it’s raining and how hard.  Maybe I spoke too soon about the storm being over – the wind is howling again, the trees swaying.  “Listen to it,” Moi says, “It’s like a hurricane out there.  I better check Doppler radar.”  I hear the rain now hitting the side of the house, see it outside the window falling at a slant and carried by in little gusts; there are puddles of water in the yard, in the path by the summer house, in the lane behind it.  But as soon as I have the chance I’ll be taking the little dog for a walk.

State of the Path:  Finally Moi tells me “it’s only lightly raining now.”  I put on my usual walking clothes because I don’t have a raincoat or parka.  Yesterday afternoon the gashed stick broke a bit, so I choose the thick birch branch, which at least has some heft.  At the outbuilding, there’s water over the cement slabs and wooden plank in the path; water seeps from the spring house.  Moi’s garden pond is overflowing, with water spilling out toward the pig pen.  Beginning at the walled garden, the path is one long puddle of water.  Mway heads down the main path, but she turns around when she sees I’m taking the side path.  Already my pants are getting wet, there are raindrops on my glasses, and I’m wondering why I’m walking out here.  The path along the orchard is not as streaked with water, but there are tiny streams flowing through the black walnut trees (though not as much as there used to be typically before the coming of McNeighborland.)  But when I round the bend and start through the goldenrod, clumps of which are bent over from the rain, the path is again saturated with water.  Back on the main path, the water trickles faster as the ground slopes more.  At the maples, a second stream of water runs alongside the stream of the path, breaking up into tiny rivulets through the maples, most of this collecting along the ridge and pouring into bugland.  Beneath the pin oaks stretches a long deep puddle.  From here I can see the creek, rushing swiftly along, a tan torrent, streaked with white bubbles.

State of the Creek:  Mway is ahead of me, and I hope she has enough sense not to wade into the water.  She turns to walk along the creek, and I lose sight of her.  At the tree stand, the creek does not quite reach the path, but there’s water over the banks on the other side, creeping up into Hutchinson’s wood lot.  The water speeds along, carrying foam and bubbles, churning, turning this way and that, humping upward into long flowing mounds.  At the first stand of honeysuckles, the path is again covered with water, and I’m grateful to have new boots because I can walk right through it.  After I pass through the honeysuckles, I look ahead and see the water flowing right over the bank at the bend where the log jam used to be, and there’s Mway walking along right in it, just beyond the plastic barrel which seems to have been moved a little bit.  When I get to the overflowing bank, I hesitate to step any further; at places I can’t tell what’s water flowing down the path and what’s water in the main stream.  But I soon realize I can guide myself by following the multiflora and other shrubs sticking out of the water and the little islands of leaves here and there -- and besides, there’s Mway up ahead walking along without getting swept away.  When I step into the water, it feels weird because I think my leg should disappear into it, but somewhere beneath the gushing water is the path which holds my feet up, although I can sense soil being eroded away.  There are tree branches fallen across the path and into other branches.  At the big locusts, where the path winds around the trees, the water follows these twists and flows into the grasses of bug land.  I walk especially careful along the narrows, every step worried that my boot might sink all the way into the water and I’ll lose my balance.  Through the shrubs I see Mway pacing back and forth on the dry side of bug land.  When I reach the swale, the water is spreading over the dirt bar, and I see the plank’s been uplifted and is caught in some branches.  I pick it up and wedge it behind a “chokeberry” so it won’t get swept any further.  I then try to step through the swale, but the water reaches to the top of my boot.  I wonder how Mwayla got over to dry land.  I try stepping in a different spot, but again the water almost overflows into my boot.  I turn around and start to backtrack along the creek, thinking I’ll have to retrace my steps all the way around to the clearing.  I test stepping into the grasses of bug land near the big locusts, but the water is too deep here too.  How did Mwayla get over to the other side?  Finally at the honeysuckles just before the tree stand, it looks dry enough to walk into bug land, and I alternately plod and high-step across the large area of the thick brown, usually untouched, grass to reach the ridge.  I wade through more high grass along the ridge then head down the soggy path through the “chokeberries,” intent on looking at the skating pond.  The plank over the feed channel is still in place, but it’s only inches above the water, which flows from the creek toward the skating pond, so the feed channel is actually acting like it's suppose to.  Even before I step off the plank, I can see ponds of water that have swelled up around the catty-nine-tails: the skating pond looks like the marsh that I suppose it actually is.  I head toward the creek.  The stream around the oaks is very wide; there’s water flowing in around the pin oak which I have to duck under, and I spy a golf ball in the grass but don’t bother to pick it up.  Then in the middle of the crest, even though the ground is high, water has made a giant pool, and I have to stomp through this while shoving my way through sheaves of bent-over goldenrod.  

The Fetch:  By the time I reach the clearing, my pants are completely soaked.  I can barely see out of my glasses, and the last thing I want to do is throw a stick.  Mway’s not even anywhere around.  Still I give her a call, I don’t know why -- maybe because I figure if I don’t throw the stick there I’ll still end up throwing it in the yard.  I call for her several times, mistaking the sound of rain dripping through the weeds to be the sound of her approaching footsteps.  Finally she appears in the path along the sumacs, running with a big grin into the clearing, and I start tossing the stick, hoping she’ll give me a break and only fetch it a few times.  But soon I realize that’s not going to be the case and start muttering to myself.  Then it starts raining harder, and I realize that gives me a good excuse to stop.  Long before she’s ready to stop, I tell her “that’s enough.”