I'm getting practiced at reading these graphs, and they're handy, a shelter in a time of storm.
This is us--"Floyd River at Alton." The Sgt. Floyd runs an eighth of a mile behind our house, what seems a long ways away most of the time. I can't step out back and take a walk along the river. It would take me ten minutes to get over there--more now; I'd have to build a raft.
When we bought the lot, we also bought the idea that Sgt. Floyd would prove a good neighbor, and he has been, mostly. But three times in the last eight months he's come up closer than good neighbors ought (read Robert Frost). He's come up close again, closer this morning than he was last night, but not as close as he was last September, when we wondered if our cat, good old Benny, would rise from the dead when the water covered his grave.
That sharp hump in the graph is the flooding as we speak. Sgt. Floyd is 18 feet above flood stage. Whoever predicts such things is guessing it'll peak at 19.3, and that 19.3 is about three feet short of last September's epic. Right now, three feet seems a country mile.
We should be breathing easily, and I am, sort of. What I can say is that in the dead of night--it's dark outside my windows--I can see he's come up closer than he was last night when we quit watching, but not as close as he was six months ago. Truth be told, I love having him as a neighbor, but there are times when he's capable of scaring me--and this is one of them. The gov's weather gurus could have punched errant digits into their computers, you know, and right now, as I speak, rain is clattering against the window. Truth is, Mother Nature is a wild-eyed libertarian.
And there's this too. If you follow the blue snake up, it's got a bit of a crook right at its head. Nobody's telling me this, but that crook suggests the original prognostication was a hair zealous--Sgt. Floyd may not make 19.3, may come up short. May. Not will.
A shelter in the time of storm--that's the roof up top and the dry floor beneath, I guess, great blessings, this shelter of ours. Tons of folks not all that far away can't say that. People who'd have to drive out here to see a swollen river, suddenly have downstairs wading pools. The hardware store is likely sold out of sump pumps again. It ain't fun.
I'm thinking we'll make it. Sometime tomorrow Sgt. Floyd will drag most of those huge ice chunks back down the slope and settle into normalcy. Right now he's out of control, but soon enough, he'll go back home, maybe leave behind some of those ice burgs like glacial erratics to melt away in 50-degree days the weatherman is promising.
There are those here who have it worse. I think of that line as religious--and it is, but it doesn't ring up only in the hearts of religious people. "I cried because I had no shoes; then I met a man who had no feet"--that one. You know it.
It's cliche, but I'm blessed that it comes so readily to me, even if it scares up some guilt. It's a bit of prickly wisdom I inherited from my parents, fitting for times like these.
"Could be worse." That's a good Calvinist line, even if against my window there's this endless offbeat patter.
"Could be worse." That old line is a shelter in the time of storm.
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UPDATE: It's now 11:15, and it is worse--20.46 feet above flood stage. It's time for the neighbor to go home.
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