The water in the mountains has
decided that enough is enough: It’s time to come down. And
down it has come, in a swell of white, tumbling magnificence the
likes of which I haven’t seen around here in my 28 years in
the West. It’s an all-or-nothing kind of flood that is
washing through our town of Lander, Wyo. In the river where I
usually drop flies for listless fish that seem tired of looking for
water, the raging current has disguised all life in its frothy
embrace.
Every day this week, we have gathered on the
banks to watch. Our thirsty minds think: water! water! We lick our
lips, remembering how long it’s been since we’ve had
this much, remembering just how parched our lives have felt in past
years.
We’ve rationed our lawn watering — or
some of us have — squelched our campfires in the backcountry,
and driven past Smokey Bear’s warning sign in town that
shouted day after hot day in red lettering: “Wildfire Danger:
High.”
After all these summers of thirst, there’s
something about this water that makes us, well, just a little
crazy. Some of my more water-starved friends have decided to try
Wyoming surfing. They’ve rigged a rope to a tree that now
stands amidst a tumbling rapid. Jumping in the glacial melt with a
piece of flat wood, they grab the rope and hop on board. It may not
be the big waves of Hawaii, but we’ll take it. The water has
brought everybody out of hiding. We dip our white feet in its
chill, we watch in awe as trees bend under the pressure. Parents
hold their children tight.
Similar spring floods are
rumbling through other Western states. In Utah and Colorado, the
snow runoff began with heavy rainfall and then hot days to bring
swift and debris-choked flooding. Rain-soaked foothills are
sliding, rock falls are tumbling onto roads, dead trees and other
debris are forcing water above banks, making people not only
anxious but some exhausted from shoving sandbags into place.
The residents of one southwestern Colorado neighborhood
had to scramble through fast-moving water to rescue their
belongings — all this drama along creeks and streams that have
only been a lethargic trickle in recent years.
In the
midst of this transformation, I’ve been dreaming of water. I
dream that people I love are being swept below its surface, that I
reach out for them but can’t grab hold. I think more than
anything the water has swept anxiety into my dreams. It won’t
last: We all know that this chocolate water will soon be gone just
as quickly as it raged into our lives. We will stand on empty banks
wondering if maybe we’d imagined it all along.
We
know that even after a wet winter, all this water won’t be
enough to offset one of the worst droughts in recent history. And
we know that we share this water with others downstream. Millions
of people depend on the snowmelt that descends from our mountains
in the West, even in years when there’s just a trickle. So in
the back of our minds, there’s always the thought: What if
there’s not enough? It’s here now, but will it come
back?
Today, there’s too much. Flood warnings are
bleeping at us on the radio, and some folks in town are bringing
out the sandbags. Floating the river is too dangerous.
This water will replenish us and wash things clean for a little
while. And then, as fast as it came, the floods will subside. And
our stories will be all that remain in the shallow creeks and
rivers.
Kerry Brophy is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a service of High Country
News in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). She works for the
National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander,
Wyoming.
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