The Flood

I told Paul that I was going to make a quick run to the post office in a neighboring town to drop off our son’s birthday gift. It had been raining all day so I pulled on my raincoat as I open the back door of the truck for Muir to jump in. Paul came to the door of the shop as I left and reminded me to be careful. I smiled at him and promised that if the road wasn’t okay on the way out, I would turn right around and come back.

Everything was fine on the way out. Not so the way back. When I drove onto the pond road I noticed that the road had completely given way at it’s head. Water rushing across the dirt as if to see who could make it first to the other side.

I quickly turned around and started up the other side. I hurried and, although the beginning of that road was nothing more than a bit bumpy, I felt an innate sense of urgency. By the time I reached the corner I understood that feeling. Cars were parked on the edge of the road, people standing quietly and watching the pond join the land. I made the quick decision to try to push for home. I swung the truck around the corner. The water was hurrying across but shallow enough for me to get through. I navigated a narrow corridor of earth to make the final ascent. I took a breath, blew it out and put my foot down. As I passed the only house on that road I looked up and saw the water racing down the hill toward me. I stopped for a moment, my mind racing like that water. I knew I couldn’t make it further. I also knew I needed to get out of that vehicle so I pulled hard right and put it as high on a banking as I could get it. I used my left boot to push the door open, grabbed a leash and put Muir on it. He looked at me from the passenger side of the truck, clearly not understanding why we needed to get out.

We stepped out onto the road and I called Paul, “I’m in trouble.”

Muir and I stood in the rain until I heard Paul calling to us from our neighbor’s side by side vehicle across the river in the field. It was 20 feet away but could have been a million miles. We stood staring at each other from across the divide. As the water powered by I could hear great hunks of the dirt road erode from the edges and crash into the stream. I didn’t recognize this stream, this wasn’t the water that my dogs stood in, panting, after a run- this was angry. Rain poured down on us in hissing sheets turned sideways, fuel for the anger.

We hollered suggestions back and forth to each other, from the ridiculous, having me swing with a rope across the water, to the reasonable; hiking further up the mountain and trying to cross there. Muir and I tried that only to find streams careening into streams. Unfortunate trees broken across the water. I contemplated lying on one of the logs and trying to creep over but could not figure out how to get Muir across. I knew that the backpack on me was now soaked and heavy, one wrong move would spin me around the trunk to the underside of it hanging on only inches from the torrent.

After four hours they left to get a board. The first, too short, caught a corner as we tried to lay it down, flipped high into the air and disappeared, within seconds, down the river. It looked as if it had been swallowed by a monster. Paul and I made eye contact and then looked away. Each time they drove away Muir and I stood together waiting. He huddled against my leg hoping that the bottom of my raincoat would offer dryness. His soggy weight offered me an odd kind of comfort.

Shane and Paul lay the second board across the water. This one, longer, stayed in place above the roiling water. All of us chose not to mention the river becoming wider by the minute. They brought two ropes with them. The first I tied around Muir’s collar. I tugged hard to reinforce the knot and leaned down and pet him. I yelled for Paul to tighten the chord on their side and give it a gentle tug. He gave a whistle- I said “Go” and Muir walked straight across the board to Paul.

This time I tied rope around my waist. Paul put his boot on the base of the board on his side, it pushed deeper into mud and moss. I lifted my eyes away from the crashing water and looked at Shane, asked him if it would hold. He told me that it might flex but it would hold. I took a breath, blew it out and walked across that board. As my boot hit the final third I felt Paul’s hand grab mine.

All roads to us were decimated by the flood, which is now considered the worst natural disaster in Vermont’s history. We are on day seven of being stranded at the house. But, as water finds a way, so, too do people. Josh’s new house is on the class four road that goes by ours. It is nothing more than a dirt path through the woods but it leads out. We have been hiking up until it is impassable at which point he meets us with his truck and takes us to the store- which is finally possible for him. We find a way.

People on our road pull into each other’s driveway on their ATV to check on each other; to laugh, to cry. We share our food, gas and new garden vegetables. We are what we have.

Montpelier, our beloved capital, is sweeping, mopping, weeping and we all weep with them. Businesses, including our own, have to function in order to feed. Right now, it is hard to see how that can happen; but it will.

We walked down the road to see all of the damage. People were standing alongside the cavernous ruin, phones in hand, snapping photos as if they were at the Grand Canyon. It was too fresh for me, I didn’t snap, but what I did notice, as I peered over the edge of what was once Brookfield road, was that at the very bottom of it all was solid bedrock. There is only so far that devastation is able to go: ultimately you hit stone, you hit strength.