Change, Power, Pancakes, Survival

So what happened last week — factually — is that we had quite a bit of rain, then a day or two no rain, then another weekend, well, three days, of rain.  The first, and heaviest, rain started on 1/9/23, the five-year anniversary to the day of the deadly mudslides for which we were then-unprepared.

This year, five years later, much had been done to protect people and our town from loss.  Metal nets had been hung over the mountains to catch falling boulders and rocks.  Large “debris basins” had been constructed to give falling stuff a place to settle safely.  But still.

Respect for the magnitude of nature.  Respect for the fact that physics and science and metal and concrete have their limits, and nature seems to have none.  At least, if I were taking bets I’d bet on the mountains, the rain, the oceans.  They’ll keep going after I’m gone, after we’re all gone.

And so we got out of town.  We got out of town before the authorities told us to get out of town.  We got out, though not after my son and I spent a few hours bailing out the side of our house.  I thought we were having fun, like an adventure kind of thing.  It turns out we weren’t.  Eventually we gave up, crossed our fingers that the rising water would not permeate our home (it didn’t), and left.

And now, home, some days later, it’s come to light that this recent rain has wrought significant changes in the landscape around us.  There’s rocks where there used to be grass and water where there used to be land, like that.  It’s shifted the ground where we live, and the ground is still shifting even as the bright sun shines yellow in our electric blue sky.

Ground is moving, and all my default fears and traumas and desires to control, to find order, feel justified.  Like, “Of course you feel all those feels, this thing happened, and it’s reminding you of that thing, which was worse, and oh yeah that other thing, which was even worse!” 

And then I realize that’s an option, but I have lots of other options how to greet change, what story I tell myself about how I fared through it, or what’s going on now.  So much of so much these days is completely beyond my intellectual capacity I’m forced to go small. 

Make the bed, walk the dog, feed the child, tend to others, fix the drainage, honor the past, embrace the present, maybe with a smidge more gratitude or humility or something. Here we are, survivors!  I’m gonna keep going.