water

private commission

there's a flood warning for the valley this week.  it's been pissing rain for three days straight, cascading in elegant waterfalls from our gutterless red metal roof.  the sopping backyard is becoming more like waterfront property with every new inch.  thank god for galoshes.  the strategically placed buckets throughout our building have large amounts of overspray from the ferocity of the falling drops, i can hear them thump thump thumping throughout the day.  those buckets are filling more rapidly and may soon require emptying.  this morning, the rain blowing north made it all the way through the front window, and created a large pool on the floor.  oh well, the studio needed a good mop anyways.  two years ago, i think it was two years ago, when the valley flooded its "twenty year flood", that fateful flood that half-filled harley & susan's silverstreak and made the neighborhood look an awful lot like an ocean, we townies luckily stayed high and dry.  we're above sea level, by a smidge.  and all of us here are surrounded by an intricate system of dikes that keep the river and ocean mostly at bay.  but sometimes they fail.  the water is unstoppable.  last time that happened it was scary, and crazy, and other-worldly, driving roads with a swift six inch current streaming over the top, seeing the homes like little islands unto themselves, surrounded by fast-moving murky grey water.  the field mice and voles were all displaced from their homes, seeking dry refuge in high spots on the road, piling into huge squirmy mounds, climbing each other's bodies to avoid the water.  some were rescued by valiant locals in a boat with buckets, while others became the raptor's feast, the only evidence left being carnage piles circling the bottom of telephone poles.  and then there was the car in a ditch, i'm sure it wasn't the only one, swept off the road by the water and filled with mud.  and the sea of apples strewn along the road, burst from a flooded silo and carried away with the current...  living with the land and the elements is sometimes all too real.  it makes life interesting, and authentic, and thrilling, interacting with wild nature at her finest, the untamed beast she can be.  because sometimes it seems we grow all to comfortable within our human systems, we take things for granted, and forget who's really in charge....and then comes a flood warning.  and we check ourselves.  

firewood?  check.  food?  check.  candles?  check.  boat?  check.  

ready as we'll ever be.