Floating Away

We live on a downhill slope from the road. Makes for a nice view from my writing place on the porch. In a rain, however, things get more complicated.

Over several months our stock tank, like others, had evaporated into a mudhole. Rosie, our yellow Lab, never seemed to mind, although she emerged every day with black legs. Optimism, perhaps.

During the years I lived here with Hale, the tank was a major focus of interest. He grew up in West Texas with a healthy respect for the scarcity of water.As soon as a good rain quit, he would put on his rubber boots and head for the tank. Our dog at the time would go with him.

How he would have celebrated the sight Tuesday! A roaring creek. The tank itself filled to brimming. The spillway full and frothing downhill.

Downhill is the operative word when you live on a slope. Right now, day two of heavy rain, I look out on a small lake surrounding the high side of our house. All our drainage swales are streaming full. And I know from yesterday that a myriad of tributaries are rushing toward the creek and tank. Too many to count.

Water is beautiful in its movement, finding the low places, the indentations. It loves the paths that hooves and feet have worn in the soil. It never inscribes a straight line unless we have prepared that line, that channel, by intent or carelessness.

The days in winter when we are treated to a deluge like this tend to be dark. The light that seeps past the intervening cloud cover feels as cool and silvery as the streams of water that reflect it. The winter brown of pastures softens as we look, brown giving way to a gentle wash of green, bare earth going dark, then shining silver as the water pools, then going dark again.

In the gray light, even dormant trees hint of pale green hiding among their branches. Every live oak leaf, every patch of new clover deepens in hue.

We are a long way from spring, but we are being given a promise. Because the truth is that Spring is here, all winter long. We just can’t see it.

Water can be destructive, too, flowing downhill on a slope. I began to worry about that on the night of the second day. Lightning sizzled overhead. The house shook with thunder. Rain pounded the metal roof. Rosie took cover behind the recliner in the living room.

We’ve had unhappy experiences, here, from rain like that. A few years ago, during a 23inch downpour over several days, the tank’s spillway dug a deep hole in the creekbank, threatening the tank dam itself. In the woods, rushing water coursed along paths we’d made and left behind washouts that exposed the roots of trees. Some of those trees have died.

Clearly our very presence in this house interferes with the downhill flow of water or there would be no temporary lake around it.

We are lucky. We are not trying to drive to a job. Our house rests high above the creek. There is a substantial riparian boundary, although it’s not as dense as it was before drought thinned it.

But I think of the lost topsoil and exposed roots caused by the way our paths widened and compressed when aging required the use of wheeled vehicles. Caused by our convenience, really.And our inability to look ahead.

The consequences of destabilized soil are very difficult to repair on a steep slope.

Readers can contact Hale at bfhale2017@gmail.com