Friday, April 2, 2010

Hello from the temperate rain forest

Hello to everyone out there in the blogoverse. The past few days we've been dealing with rain and flooding in my part of the real world. It sure has been damp.
The road 300-400 yards from my house is over-washed by a river; my older kids wanted to go take a look at it so I said "sure, but stay out of the water"....10 minutes later I stroll down my walk to peek at the kids and sure enough they have their shoes off and are playing about in the shallowest edge of the flooding... arggghhhh. I walked down and fetch the kids and reminded them I had said stay out of the water and let them know why: the flood water could be full of pollution, nearby homes had their septic systems overflowed, there could be parasites in the water and sure the water was slow and shallow where they were but that didn't mean the road wasn't under-washed and do you really think folks who had their homes destroyed want to come by and see you playing here?. Sure I might have done exactly the same thing as a young teen but I'd have managed to not get caught until I got home with wet feet.
A few days earlier I was at my parents home the next state over and helping them get their basement pumped out. The wife has a 10 minute drive to work that has taken her about a half hour since the rains because of the road closures due to flooding.
Yesterday at mid-day I was on a paved hiking/bike trail that had a number of small dead fish on it, they had been washed 1/4 mile down the trail away from the pond the trail passes. The pond itself was alive with wildlife there were snakes, huge tadpoles, fish and crayfish all within feet of me at one point; floods stir up the beasties (including a bat flying along the trail at mid day). I also noticed the hiking trail which is an old paved over rail line had an underpass cut in one section, currently there was a run off stream going under the road about 30 feet down from the top but years past a number of disused country roads lined by old rock walls joined at an intersection before the route went under the bridge (must explore that in the future).

Of course being the RPGer that I am I couldn't help but note a lot of this stuff for future game sessions.

3 comments:

  1. Better times to you, and soon, I hope!

    ReplyDelete
  2. We are fine, some of my neighbors have it a lot tougher certainly. My house is on a steep little hill. My biggest fear the whole time was losing drinkable water if the town wells got compromised.
    The flood waters have gone down a good bit today. The river is still over-washing down the street but it looks more like a giant puddle now then it did yesterday.

    ReplyDelete