Now I find myself with a whole bunch of stuff to write about.  Too much.

First: The Duck

Yesterday, G was looking out the window and said, “The dogs have a duck.”  He was already out the back door before I got halfway there, but I never stopped to put on my shoes.  We shot outside yelling, “Leave it!!”  But I ran past Guy – the spirit of Chaz having fallen upon me.  I was furious.

The dogs aren’t used to furious.  They fell away slightly, and there she was, a common little brown girl duck, terrified and trying to force her way through the chain link we use to keep children out of the river.  When we got close, the dogs were still making feints at her – but I stood close to her, so dismayed as she put her little head and neck through the fence in a frenzy, trying to force her way through.  She had lost feathers.  Her wings were askew.  I was horrified that my young dogs had broken them.  And there was a wound near her tail, bleeding.  I could have killed my dogs in that moment.

I followed her, shouting at the dogs, as she moved down the fence, looking for a hole, any hole.  My own anger must have made it even scarier for her.  Then G told me she wouldn’t bite, so for the first time in my life, I picked up a duck, softly holding her wings to her sides.  She weighed nothing.  She was so soft.  But she didn’t know I was there.  She was straining forward, willing her way to the water.

I got to the deck, the only place clear enough I could drop her into the foliage below where she’d be safe, even if she couldn’t fly.  Her neck was stretched out straight and I could feel that little will straining at reality.

When I let her go, she flew down to the river on wings still strong.  The wound had bled, and I was worried about that in-flood water, that it might be too muddy, that she’d get sick from it.  But she was safe from us, and that was the important thing.

Tucker was at the fence, barking at her.  And I became one tight, narrowed eye.  “NO!!” I barked back at him.  He took one look at me and shrank – dropped his head and what little tail he has and withdrew, the humblest dog I have ever seen.

Second: The River

Now today, a new thing.  I have been starting very slow.  I am, after all, partially retired. I’d fed the horses and done the treadmill – and checked my mail, which was sad and empty.  So I was getting ready to take a shower.  Our rooms are on the second story, the bathroom toward the back.  The window is really too high for me to quite see out of it, but if I could, it overlooks the river.

I had turned on the water and was less than presentable when I heard a helicopter.  Not that that’s particularly strange; we live near a small airport and we hear airplanes sometimes and choppers often.  But this was close.  And it didn’t just pass overhead.  The sound of it was loud, and it wasn’t moving.  Like the thing was hovering over our house.  I ran from window to window, unable to see it, but almost alarmed at its nearness.  Then it went off, faded off.  I called G to see if he had heard it, if he had seen anything.  Then I went back to the shower.  And I heard it again.

This is the summer river.  Full of cousins that year.  Note the rocks, the narrow channel.

So here I am: dripping wet, with shampoo in my hair, and the high window is all steamed.  I pulled it open, stood on tip toe and looked out.  And there it was, a huge blue helicopter, cruising slowly along on the other side of the river, no more than thirty feet above the ground.  I could see the pilot, and he was staring out at something, moving about an inch forward every second.  If he saw me at all, he saw only my fingers on the sill and huge eyes.

Summer, another year.  Again, see how you can see the rocks poking above the water?  It’s totally dry under the deck.  This is the 4th of July and Cammon is running a fishing pond for the little kids, standing under the deck, fastening little toys onto the fishing line.  You can’t get under the deck just now.  It’s three feet in water.

Just enough run-off to float the canoe.  Almost.

After I was dressed, I went out to the back, to stand on the deck and take pictures of the water.  There’s a swell walking/jogging trail on the other side of the river.  The greatest thing about it is that, since it went in, not so many people come climbing over our fences up and down this side, trying to get to the water.  This morning, along came a little golf-cart thing with guys in emergency vests on.

They think someone has gone into the river.  Normally, that means nothing.  We have people in the river all summer long – some fishing, some tubing.  The river is our irrigation water – it’s very regulated most months of the year and so low in the summer, you can walk across and barely wet an ankle.  But in high run-off, it’s deadly: narrow, deep and fast.  In 1983, when the waters came within a foot of the top of the engineered bank, we looked out the upstairs window one morning and saw a kayak go by, upside down.  We’d talked to some of the rescue guys, men professionally trained in water rescue; they said, if they saw anybody in the river at this stage of flood, the best they could do was to throw a rope and float, hoping the person could catch it.  Not one of them would have the strength to enter the water and live.

Playing in the river.  Nice river.  Benign river.

1983 – the year that almost took out our neighborhood.  Evidently, I took only these pictures of it.  I think I was too scared to want to go out there and stand close enough to shoot it.  The water had gone down about a foot and a half.

When the kayak went by, we stopped looking at the water.  There was nothing anybody could do, and I didn’t want to see what I was helpless to deal with.  And yes, I know how that sounds. We just prayed.

This year.  Can you tell the difference?  Yeah.  Neither can I.

It’s not that bad yet this year.  And some people say we learned from that close call.  But you wouldn’t want to get anywhere near this water in full run-off.  Here comes the helicopter again.  When I yelled at them this morning to ask what was going on, they said, “We think somebody went into the river.”  I am hoping this will turn out to be one massively expensive mistake.  I have checked the banks from my yard, afraid, but unable to stop hoping.

That really bad year, we saw giant trees scooting down the river like toothpicks.  This morning, I saw maybe twenty five feet of middling tree do the same.

The helicopter just went over again, on our side this time, still scanning – they’ve been at this for five hours.  The sound of it shakes the house and sets the heart racing.

It was moving very, very slowly.  Ponderously.  Slow enough you could actually see it and think about how strange this machine really is.  It seems almost alive.

I guess I am reporting the news.  I guess I will go and check all the patchy places along the back again soon.  I’m really hoping they find the guy in his bathtub at home, safe and clean and happy.

I’d rather be writing about yarn.

Several hours later: We just heard it on the news: someone had found a motorized wheelchair turned over on the bank of the river, and the police were called in.  The river, they say, is running four times faster than usual, and they were afraid the wheelchair’s owner had fallen in.  Finally, after all this – all day – it was ascertained that the wheelchair had been stolen and dumped.  I’m thinking it may even have belonged to a neighbor up the street.  So the river may rage on; nobody’s in it.  Very grateful.