For those of you raised in the South, or had relatives who were, you may have heard this old saying before. If not, read on.
I don't know exactly when I first heard this expression, but it was so common that I never gave it a thought. Basically, it's used in situations where you've done all you could...and the rest was up to God. When I traveled with my Dad in the Appalachian mountain towns, he would always depart a business meeting with the same phrase...."well...see you in a couple months" and they would reply by saying..."God willing and the creek don't rise". For my family, living in comfortable Louisville, it was just an expression. For the mountain people, it took on a whole other meaning. When creeks rose in those little towns, it would literally cut off the town from the main road.
Well, guess what? Claudia and I spent most of yesterday afternoon literally watching the creek behind our cabin rise...and rise...and rise. If you've turned on the Weather Channel in the last month, you've no doubt read about the situation in California. Areas that have suffered through eight and sometimes ten year droughts are now finding themselves in extreme flooding conditions. Reservoirs throughout the state (including the largest one in California near here) that were at 10 percent capacity a year ago are now full and overflowing....something the "experts" said would either never happen, or if it did happen, would take a decade or more of rain. So much for the experts. Mother Nature had other plans.
Our cozy little cabin sits on the lowest section of the 35-acre property that makes up the Northern Queen Inn. We picked it specifically for the privacy it offers....and the fact that it sits directly across a cool old wooden bridge that spans a very large creek. Yesterday morning, we noticed the waterfall by the dining room was louder than usual and the area around it where we had taken pictures just the day before.....was underwater. That got our attention. The creek was rising. Fast.
We stood on the bridge to our cabin and picked out a boulder in the middle of the stream that was about 6' in diameter (rocks are big here) and sticking out about 3'. We also located three large tree roots on the bank that were about 6" apart vertically. We decided to use the boulder and the large tree roots as visual gauges to keep track of the rising water. Around 5:00 PM, the water started rising about 6" an hour. In a creek this size, that's a lot of water folks. So every hour on the hour, we put on our rain gear (it was still raining hard), grabbed a flashlight and went out to check. Up it came. Around 9:00, the boulder was underwater and so were the large tree roots. That was a 3' rise in just a few hours. We had to make a decision. If the creek kept rising, we would be cut off from the parking lot where our truck and trailer were parked. It would also mean our truck and trailer would be in trouble. We could move them to the upper level parking lot on the property, but it would have been a major pain the ass to do it in the rain. So....we waited some more and watched Forest Gump. What a great movie. Around 10:30, the rain quit and the water stopped rising. Yeeehaaa! But....we worried about it all night.
This morning, our little buddy came over to the bed to touch our elbows with his wet nose. What a guy.....how does he know when it's 5:30? I got up, put on my LL Bean rain parka and headed out with Tuck for his morning pee break and to check the water. Deep sigh of relief....it had dropped about 3' from last night. We made it. The rain has stopped. The meaning of the expression I've heard since I was a little kid just became perfectly clear.
Today, we begin our search for a rental house. It has to have a two-car garage with room to store the Volvo, the Isetta, the BMW, room for my tools and all the non-critical stuff you normally keep in a garage, our truck and the trailer, a spot for the Airstream trailer we plan on buying this Summer and accept pets. The pet part is the deal-breaker. This will be easier said than done. Most rental properties don't accept pets. Plus, mountain homes have spectacular views....and spectacular driveways. Think....the drive to our storage unit. Some of the drives lead down from the street in front of the home and others lead up from the street below. We checked out a really nice home yesterday that had, in our opinion, an impassable drive that led up at a 45 degree level from the street. We went partially up and had to back down really slowly. How they built the house is beyond me. How did movers get furniture up there? We drove off and scratched another one off the list. Stay tuned.
We hope to walk around the town today between errands and post some pictures. Stay tuned and thanks for reading.
Cheers!