HIGH WATER

Looking downstream from the front-door deck.

Visitors to my streamside abode always ask the same two questions. And they are also the ones I see in this "comments section" whenever I mention the rise of my cottage-side river in a post.

How close does the water actually come to the house?

Am I afraid of getting flooded?

My answers, in order, are: pretty close, and, yes indeed.

I certainly understand everyone's curiosity. I wondered the same thing the first time I laid eyes on the place. So I thought you might like to see a few photos.

Note the stone step and the one, barely visible below, which lead

down to a landing, now under several feet of water.

The deck (with rail) runs across the front of the cottage.

The shots were taken a few minutes ago. I was standing just outside the door, on the end of the wider deck that runs alongside the cottage at a right-angle to the riverbank. The bit of deck you see in the right of the second and third shots is the narrow deck that runs across the width of the house. In the middle shot, below the small platform, you'll notice a stone step or two. There are eight of these steps leading down to a stone landing which is, itself, about 2 to 3 feet above the river at normal pool. So what you're seeing is about 8 to 9 feet of rise.

Scary, huh?

Here you can see the yard level; though hard to tell in the photo,

it's actually 8-10 in. above the water. Several times the

water has been high enough to come under

the platform where you see the rock.

Actually, this is not particularly high water—or maybe I should say it's not the highest the river regularly gets. Every year there's a rise or two that exceeds this point by a foot. Not high enough that all the grass you see in the bottom shot is underwater, but high enough that water an inch deep creeps under that wooden platform, and edges its way toward the main deck and my front door.

But…from what you see here, to the a point where water would actually be level with the bottom of my door would require about another two feet of rise. And inside the cottage, the door opens to a vestibule level that's 6–7 inches below the main floor level. So I do have some additional leeway.

This particular rise didn't result entirely from days of downpours—though Friday night and Saturday we did have several heavy rains. Rather, the problem was it came on the heels of a heavy snowmelt which had the river up the first of last week to one step below the point you see here. The water began to recede, and had gone down three or four feet when the rain arrived…which sent it right back up after a day's delay. There's usually a lag between the rain and the rise, since it doesn't matter how much falls here, rather how much falls miles to the northwest, upstream. I often never see a raindrop, yet have a two-foot rise the following day.

This stone cottage was built in 1919. Since that time, it has had water inside three or four times. So chances are, it will happen again…though conditions have to combine in just the right (or wrong!) order. Plus, the floor has been raised by that extra 6–7 inches, so that will help and might spell the difference. You do have to accept the potential of flooding if you choose to live so close to a river. I pay my flood insurance and figure I'll move such things as books, art, photos, computers, and my Steinway piano should the river decide to keep on coming; the rest is just stuff, entirely replaceable.

Nevertheless, do I worry? Not as much as you might think. Myladylove does, but she's not the risk taker and semi-fatalist (realist?) I am. I try and reassure her. Mostly, I talk to the river, pray about it some, too. I accept it for what it is—a river. A living bit of landscape that runs through my life. Beautiful almost all the time.

And always the one in charge…

———————

RISING WATER AND COMING SPRING

Showers this morning, following a day of light rain yesterday. According to the long-range weather forecast, we'll have rain throughout the rest of the week and weekend. Not too much, I hope, since the river has already risen perhaps five feet from what it was last weekend, and is still coming up. This rise came as the fast-melting snow found it way into the upstream network of ditches and rivulets, brooks and small creeks, and eventually into the river which flows past my cottage—a stream which will carry and dump it into an even larger river, and thence into a third, and finally a fourth—the mighty Mississippi—which will take it all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

I don't know why, but whenever I consider this network of streams which runs from the rich black farmland of northwestern Ohio to Louisiana's salty deltas, I'm always amazed to have such a front-row seat. Watersheds were our first highways—the arterial blood of a burgeoning nation; from canoe to flatboat to stern-wheeler, streams carried explorers, traders, families, goods. Most of our first towns were located adjacent to a river. Thinking about "my" river, I see not only the geographic connections, but also the historical.

One bit of good news is that our temperature today is supposed to hit a high of 64˚F…incredible considering not many mornings ago the thermometer read a numbing 16˚F when I went out to replenish the bird feeders at dawn. Moreover, the week's highs are suppose to remain at least in the 50s, which I suppose makes the rain more tolerable, though it doesn't do much for photography and taking walks.

Ahhh-h-h, but isn't spring's coming always about weather? Why should this year be any different?

———————

RISING WATER…

This is a sort of follow-up to yesterday’s posting and its brief mention of the effects of upstream rain, with today’s view of the recently fallen snag I wrote about last Monday.[here] As you can see by comparing the two photos, the river is up. I’d guess about a 5-6 foot difference in the water level. Most of this rise occurred yesterday, from mid-morning onward. When I checked yesterday morning—and mentioned afterwards in my posting—the water was up no more than a few inches above what it had been prior to Friday night’s thundershowers. I speculated then that the real effects of the storm and the amount the water level might subsequently rise, would depend on how much rain fell upstream, in the river’s upper drainage area to the north and northwest of here. Upstream rain is always the critical criteria for any riverside dweller; rain sluicing down upon our home stretch of river matters not a whit to the stream’s level, though it could be disastrous to those who live farther downstream. While this high-water view might cause one to conclude that upstream rainfall had been substantial…judging from past experience, I’d say probably not. I base that on the river’s slow rise. I’ve seen it reach this level within an hour following a drenching storm—and yes, that’s scary! This time, I’d say we’re just now seeing a fairly modest rain which fell on the drainage basin’s woods, fields, and farmlands, found its way into ditches and tiny tributaries, then into brooks and small feeder creeks, and drained on into mainstream of the river. From here the water will soon join an even larger river, which will itself empty into the Ohio River, get dumped into the Mississippi, and thence into the Gulf of Mexico after something like a week of downhill travel time. Another point—if you look at the two photos and compare the width of the island between views (see the water just over there, through the trees) you’ll notice how much narrower the dry land mass has temporarily become. The distance in the low-water shot from the near bank to the island’s far edge is approximately 75 feet. The island is about 400 feet long, and is one of several, all equally long and skinny, strung like the white-line center dashes marking a highway lane. In the high-water shot, that width is reduced to about half, maybe 35 feet. You can also see one of the low transverse areas which, during times of high water, allow the two channels to merge, temporarily sub-dividing the single island into three or four shorter islands. Note a large section of the fallen snag is lying in this now-flooded low area. That’s why I speculated the downed trunk might not be around following a rise in the river. We’ll see about that…though so far the old stub is hanging tough and staying in place. Perhaps you might wonder what island wildlife other than birds do during high water periods? Well, the fox squirrels have no problem; they simply imitate their gray cousins and take to the treetops, foraging on bud tips or whatever other edibles the season offers. I presume coons, possums, and skunks either abandon ship or den up, snug and dry, in of the many hollow sycamores. I’ve have seen deer become marooned for several days. The normal depth the water in the channel beyond the island is, in places, less than knee deep. Consequently, as the water begins to come up, even with a fast rise, there’s usually plenty of time to make an escape. But wait too long to move to the mainland, and they find themselves having to decide whether to swim for it, or stay stuck until the water levels lowers. For any deer which does manage to get themselves stuck, there’s a fair amount of browse available on the island, so food for a few days usually isn’t a problem. What can be a problem, of course, is getting caught on a rise where the water comes up even higher than pictured here. Once, the winter after I moved to this riverside cottage, a pair of whitetails became stranded on the island as the water rose to a point as high as I’ve yet witnessed. Fortunately, there’s a little knob at the island’s upstream tip that rises about eight feet higher than the land you see here. This became the deer’s home—a tiny island about 20 by 30 feet, or about the size of my cottage’s great room; yet a sufficient and safe enough refuge, nevertheless. The whitetails selected a sunny spot to bed down, out of the wind and facing upstream, and simply waited. Of course, there wasn’t much else they could do or anywhere else to go. While they probably got hungry during their ordeal, both deer made it off a few days later. The next twenty-four hours will confirm whether my guess on the water’s rise proves correct. It will also reveal (for this round of high water, anyway) the old snag’s fate…stay or go. I’ll keep you posted.

RIVER'S VOICE RETURNS

Even before we bought and moved into our modest streamside cottage, we noted the property came with natural background music courtesy of the river. There's a large riffle or small section of rapids, depending on your subjective nomenclature, directly in front of the house. Many of our neighbors actually refer to this feature, a four-foot drop in the river level over perhaps seventy feet, as "the falls," though in my opinion, that's certainly stretching reality a bit too far. On the other hand, when someone in a canoe comes floating downstream, and has enough expertise (or maybe just luck) to negotiate the riffle/rapids smoothly, I can almost squint my eyes and fool myself momentarily into imagining our home faces a northcountry trout stream. This fantasy is helped if the canoeist is wearing a flannel shirt and the canoe is either hollyberry red or spruce green and not one of those modern day-glow non-traditional hues such as lime, tangerine, yellow, or purple. Anyway, water pouring across this stony, sloping portion of riverbed, coursing over ledges and washing against boulders as it hurries downstream, naturally makes noise—a dull purling roar that has become a comforting part of the auditory landscape. It has even given us a tentative name for our cottage…Riversong…though we're still trying to decide whether or not naming our home is too pretentious, too old-fashioned, or too influenced by all the British mysteries we've read. Like most background noises—soothing “white noise” in particular—the river’s voice is now something we have to consciously listen for or it’s generally unnoticed. The exception comes when we open the sliding glass door to the small front deck overlooking the riffle and pool below, and are startled anew at how really loud the river’s constant sound seems. We forget this because the cottage walls are solid Indiana limestone, a full 17-inches thick. Beside being bulletproof and more-or-less fireproof, substantial stone walls are also soundproof—no chit-chatting between even adjacent rooms unless you conduct your conversations at a shout. These stone walls effectively block the river’s voice—or certainly mute most of it—until it takes something like sliding open the deck door, or opening the front door, and hearing the sudden noise to remind us there’s a river only a few feet away. I guess I should also explain that we always think of the river end of the house as being the "front" even though the main entry door is on the side of the structure and you actually park and approach the house from the rear, where there's a second, smaller "back" door. Until it rained yesterday and the day before, the river had been silent for months. So long that I can’t remember the last time I heard a sound from its passage. Low water had exposed the riffle’s stones and ledges, revealing them like skeletal bones in a decaying carcass. The water was so low that it simply slipped between the dry rocks like a thief sneaking through a room. The rain changed that. The water was up a few inches yesterday morning; more by noon; and still coming up last night at bedtime. Today it continues to rise, slowly, and is now up enough that all the stones in the riffle/rapids are underwater, which means about a three or four foot rise since Thursday. What makes this special—and the reason for writing—is that along with the higher water level has come sound…the river’s voice has been restored! A dull but fast growl with just a hint of possible seriousness at its undertone edge. The same river voice that accompanies many of spring's rainy weeks. Moreover, as is often the case when you bump into a friend you haven’t seen or heard from in quite awhile, you suddenly realize their absence had left a hole in your life; you missed them more than you realized. That’s how I feel about hearing the river’s renewed song. I’ve missed it a lot and I’m glad to have it back. Now if the river gods will just hold things where they’re at, check the rising water from coming up higher…well, I’ll be happy and perfectly satisfied.