Drying Out

Well, the flooding has gone down and we now have a well behaved creek in place of this 30 acre lake. I think everybody has left the shelters on the coast, although some folk are going to have a tough time putting their lives back together. I guess I hurt most for the many dairies in the Vernonia area. You sit in your upstairs and you listen to the mooing in the barn. Until it stops. When that barn is the highest ground around, there's nothing else you can do. The rivers came up so fast, moving animals out by truck wasn't an option, nor was getting out, period.

Our road was pretty badly gullied. It's gravel, we maintain it ourselves. But the changing nature of the residents was pretty obvious when the only people out with shovels and wheelbarrows were my two 80 year old neighbors and myself. Outside the seriously rural areas, you see less and less responsibility for the community outside one's own boundaries. Here, neighbors who don't clean ditches cause much of the road damage. We don't teach community responsibility much any more. Not in the suburban and urban residential areas. It is someone else's job, usually the city, county, landscaper, or what have you.

I've got to say one thing...when you're out hauling gravel until you're 80 you stay pretty fit. I guess I won't trade in my lifestyle any time soon. Neither will I move to any river floodplains any time soon. I do love living on my sleeping volcano. Water runs DOWN. Let's just hope it stays sleeping!