Floods

Living on a creek has a lot of wonderful advantages with the summer beauty, the potential to irrigate pastures, all the birds and animals it supports, but it also has its moments, as with the Northwest's recent severe storm, where one wonders exactly how high the water is going to rise.

In the nearly 30 years, I have lived here, it has never come closer to the house than the edge of our driveway. One particularly bad year, we drove into the nearby town where they were giving out sand for filling bags. We brought home enough sand to fill some bags, formed our little bulwark against the rising water, saw the water come to the edge of them but then recede. (By the way, disposing of sandbags after they are no longer needed isn't the easiest thing in the world.)

In this flood, although the creek went over its banks, and the rain poured down, it didn't threaten the barn or house. Since we fence the livestock away from it, we didn't have to worry much about animals drowning; although with two new calves, I worried a little anyway.

For a little while, this creek became more a river than a creek. The rising water did some damage in knocking down trees, forming natural dams that can potentially become a future problem, and eroded a few banks. The beaver have been contributing to the downing of trees. Too many beaver can denude a creek bank as much as too many cows. Our beaver are bank beaver, don't build dams in the creek, but they still gnaw down trees.

These pictures are when the water had gone down some. The day it was the worst, pictures were out of the question, not only because of the high wind, but the sky was so dark that my camera thought it had to be dusk. It kept demanding a flash which didn't do much for illuminating anything in the distance.

The storm sounded fearsome. I never like high wind, but we didn't get the brunt of it. The farm lost no trees from the yard, no buildings, and only had power out for an hour one night. Some not far away are still without power. I love living along a creek. Value it highly, but it's not without some problems.