floods - March 11, 2012

We walked around Washington today for the third day in a row. Our dog finished her overnight camp experience at the dog boarding place and got picked up by the house sitters, apparently OK. We met lots of dogs and it was in no way, shape or form winter. Maybe I just need to stop pretending, and start writing the spring section of this project. Keeping the cold out is a big project, but people also mostly want to be dry, in part because wee lose body heat faster when we are wet. Of hypothermia cases, the majority involve people falling into cold water, not getting overexposed on land. Witness that tale of the chechaquo from earlier this blog: He died of cold, but it was the wet foot that really did him in. So keeping water out. It has a lot of forms: we wrap ourselves in waterproofing, or our legs and feet at any rate; we put a roof over our head and drains around our house to move rain and meltwater; we use umbrellas, sou'westers, ponchos, oilskins, and so on to let us walk out in the rain without getting soaked. And then there's flooding. From Noah and Gilgamesh, the story of surviving the flood is one of just getting out of the way. Whether the flood is from a tsunami, a broken dam or melted ice dam, a sudden downpour, or a rapid snowmelt, floods are metaphors for unstoppability, washing everything before them. Like other big weather, but unlike snowfall, a flood is only to be danced around and avoided, not tamed. Well, no. I'm curious about the line between the "tameable flood"— and there are a multitude of flood-control systems out there—dams, levees, diversion canals—and the monsters you can only get up to higher ground and watch.