It’s been quite harrowing here lately, living in the crook of a raging brook instead of the usual humming brook.
My neighborhood is on the national news with a building dangling and cars floating through parking lots. I, myself, am up and functioning and our power is finally, blessedly on after over 36 relatively brief hours without but my brain is still coming to grips with the overwhelming perversity and randomness of mother nature that I am witnessing first hand….. and second-hand.
Thirteen Vermont communities are without access with roads completely washed out. Without power or a way out. No school, can’t get to their jobs, food rotting in their refrigerators, no water sources. Want to go West from here? Not for a while.
One never realizes just how many small bridges there are over so many brooks. Many of them look like overpasses with a trickle beneath. The brooks of Vermont wind and weave back and forth under most of Vermont roadways – and often there are spring fed streams that flow through dirt basements.
Those trickles turned from four-foot widths to 30/50 foot widths, probably running about 50 miles per hour (don’t hold me to the science of that – I’m estimating the time it took to watch a 40 foot tree fall and then get sucked down the brook like it a giant hand was pulling it) in a matter of hours. The course of those streams have in many places been permanently changed, for example our local Farmers Market I noticed now has the brook flowing through the middle of it.
This is not a great shot – I was running around as a huge tree was felled and dragged with the most awful crack and crunching noise, like the breaking of a giants bones and bumping, mauling anything in its path as it moved down the stream unblievably fast – but this was my neighbors lower yard with a vegetable/herb garden that they would observe for momentary peace from their chair.
It is now a stone and mud flat.
They came to our house when the street was evacuated as the water rose quickly threatening to overwhelm their home. They were fortunate when the slight slope saved their house.
The water is brown and has a horrible foul odor. Indiscriminately it carves new roads, flattens all plant life, moves boulders, invades property that appeared securely distant form any harm. It took a bit to discern from the thunderous noise the source of the odd thumping…. but then we realized that it was the rocks, huge boulders that were being thrown together like the banging of many pairs of sneakers tumbling in a giant dryer.
Even withdrawn there is the layer of stinky mud, cracked and collapsed pavement, trees wobbly and rocks strewn in odd places, views where there were none previously. We can hear the brook, as always in the spring and fall, murmuring now 24-7. Our usual swimming hole is unrecognizable and it will be awhile before I feel comfortable venturing down the bank to explore as the banks are unstable and feel unfamiliar and unsafe.
I drive and view scenes of devastation and can’t seem to stop making noises, gasps, oh my gods , my mouth a perpetual O. Our new world is startling and my eyes feel fresh and vigilant.
It is just the beginning but I am okay, I can get to work, I can eat and take hot showers. Gratitude and humility are my friends. I talk to everyone and they talk to me of the great flood that was not a Hurricane. All other topics seem superfluous….
Life Decanted