If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break,
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break,
When The Levee Breaks I’ll have no place to stay.
Mean old levee taught me to weep and moan, [X2]
Got what it takes to make a mountain man leave his home,
Oh, well, oh, well, oh, well.
((c) Led Zeppelin)
Canoe with Book Order (06/27/2012)
My distributor Partners wants copies of Laman’s River. An entire carton, which is a good thing. It’s 7:00am and Rene’ and I are once again on our way to work. It’s my wife’s 55th birthday and, because the water is finally receding from our road and the river is slowly going down, we can’t canoe to work today. We have to wade.
Rene' Munger's Birthday Bath in the Flood Waters of the Cloquet
As the title to this essay says, the Island Lake Dam held together during the 500 year storm. I didn’t coin that phrase: Someone else did. We thought, when we built our new home downriver from our old place on the river in 1999 that the water coming up to the top of the bank in front of the hole being dug for the new house’s foundation was the highest it would ever go. They (whoever “they” is) called that storm and resultant runoff, the “storm of the century”. Maybe it was the storm of the 20th century and the one we just experienced is the storm of the 21st century? Or maybe “they” are right and the past week’s diluvial onslaught was indeed the storm of this half of the millennium. Whatever. The point is, the levee (in this case, the Island Lake Dam) didn’t break and we were extremely lucky. Unlike thousands of other Northlanders, who suffered extreme damage to, or the total loss of, their homes and possessions, my family was merely inconvenienced by the weather and the our isolation.
In any event, we wade out to the borrowed van at the end of our road, books high and dry in the Coleman canoe; the water too high to drive through but too low to canoe.
“I’m out here to wish you a happy birthday, Mom, but there’s no one here to greet me except my wiener dog,” Chris, our third son says when he calls Rene’ as we’re driving home.
“We’ll be home soon,” Rene’ promises before hanging up the phone.
“Did you ask him if the water is low enough to drive in?”
“I forgot.”
I call Chris back on my iPhone and get the details.
“Sounds like we can drive in,” I say optimistically, spinning Chris’s more cautionary words into words of promise.
By the time Rene’, Jack, and I arrive home after a long day of work and a youth soccer game (Jack’s team won, by the way, showing some real mettle in the contest against a team that had beaten them handily a few weeks back), the water is indeed low enough for us to navigate safely in Pauline’s borrowed van.With Chris’s help, we get the canoes squared away, the paddles put back in the storage shed, and Jack tackles the push mowing while I climb on our rider and begin cutting grass that has had far too much time to grow.
It’s 9:30pm and nearly dark by the time I’m done and wander into the house for dinner. But it’s a sure bet that the Great Flood of 2012, though over, will live long in stories told by the Munger clan.
Peace.
Mark
