Nature’s wisdom

The question you don’t want to ask, when the river is flowing into your basement, is the one I asked my husband—“Honey, do we still have flood insurance?”

The answer was “no” of course, with an explanation, between buckets, about the quadrupled premiums after Hurricane Ivan, for which we had no claim. I guess he figured the odds were good that there wouldn’t be two “hundred-year floods” in our lifetime. So much for gambling.

A fat robin greeted me at dawn that morning—the first sighting of the season, for me. Minutes earlier, the fire sirens had roused us, heralding high water. Our sleep had already been abbreviated by insomnia, fueled by a fear of the unknown. Early reports predicted this flood would not equal Ivan’s wrath. But by morning light, the river was already surging through the eddy and testing our elevated banks.

Before the river made its ascent over the banks and into our basement, I had felt a familiar dread, like the one I felt on 9/11, waiting for the towers to fall. We didn’t know what was going to happen, but we were afraid something would.

In 2001, I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in that nether hour between the attacks and the collapse. This time, a much less fearsome occasion, I made French toast. I guess it’s a natural response to stress—nourishment.

But the sight of two Narrowsburg Fire Department volunteers, including no less than the chief himself, measuring water depth on our riverside lawn, made our toothsome breakfast an orphan as we hurried outside to consult with the experts.

“Voluntary evacuation” the chief said, another parallel to 9/11, for me. That time, leaving was a no-brainer. If the feds couldn’t protect the World Trade Center, they sure couldn’t be counted on to protect our loft. But this evacuation was one we didn’t volunteer for.

It’s a good thing, too. As a pair of Mallard ducks swam in our side yard, my mate and I were filling a wet-dry vacuum as fast as we could, and dumping it into the laundry sink.

“Call us when it’s four inches deep,” said the fireman, “then we can pump it out.”

We found no consolation in the fact that our basement wasn’t flooded enough for professional help.

I felt like the heroine in a “B” movie, watching the aliens slink under the front door and into the family room, as I watched the river pay an unwelcome visit through every available crack in our entryway. Carpet may not be our next choice of floor covering for the front room.

In a tribute to the power of positive energy, a ring of debris now circles the riverside of our house. We call it the Reiki ring. That morning, standing on the balcony of our upstairs bedroom, I summoned the Reiki energy to protect us “for the greatest and highest good.”

It is all Reiki can be used for, and the thought of others suffering for our comfort would be no comfort at all. Next time, though, I’ll do the whole house. Every side of the house was touched by water, except the Reiki side.

Even with all our vigilance, we were ultimately worthy of the attentions of the fire department. Only minutes after a call to 911, a full crew arrived with a portable pump. They snaked a hose through a vent in our foundation wall and out coughed muddy water onto the nearby perennial bed.

The worst was over by 1:00 p.m. The river stopped surging over the banks and water began to seep deeply into the saturated soil. Our driveway was still a lake, so we trekked to town across neighboring lawns, like refugees. Everyone there was high and dry, enjoying the spectacle. The river, that is now lazy and pine green, was an awesome force of nature, filled with man’s inventions, from boats to refrigerators, ripped from their safe moorings in a moment of raw power. A few hundred yards downhill, it had been a fearsome intruder, with unknowable intentions.

Today, there are daffodils shooting up through the silt and debris left by this nameless flood. We are encouraged by the thought that river mud may have some nutritional value for our budding roses and lilacs. When nature strikes, she usually strikes twice, first taking away, and then giving back. Her wisdom is unknowable, but I trust it more than that of mankind.