Flood in a Forest

Floodwaters gushing through this forest left wood piled up little stacks everywhere. Photo by Eric.

As reports of damage come in from around my region, it’s becoming clear just what Hurricane Irene did as it passed through. At least one town was erased from the map — Arkville. Others, such as Margaretville, had Main Street turned into a river. Power will be out for weeks many places. My assistant Sarah just came into work — to rest, after spending the last 48 hours dealing with a basement that was flooding at the rate of 7,000 gallons an hour. It seems like the worst damage was to Vermont, which is not a place there are normally floods. I read that the last remaining covered bridges were washed away, proof that this really was a 100 year or 200 year event.

I haven’t been focusing on photographing the damage to property as much as what I’ve discovered in a forest I like to hang out in. The photo above is on the flood plain of the Coxing, what is normally a friendly little creek. In prior photos I showed the Coxing at high water. Now that the water has receded, you can see changes created by the flood. There are these little piles of wood scattered everywhere, as branches caught on trees and roots and finally on one another. It looks like the Girl Scouts came through and collected firewood in neat stacks.

Log is wedged under the forest floor west of the stream. Photo by Eric.

In this photo, you can see how the forest floor has been washed away, exposing the bedrock. A log being carried downstream wedged itself under the matting. Another couple of hours of flooding and all of these trees would have been washed away. Below is a detail nearby where the matting of the forest floor was taken up by the flood, right near the photo of the log. Basically this forest is a lot of matted roots and soil making a kind of web on the bedrock.

Forest floor west of the stream, on Aug. 29, 2011. Photo by Eric.

One last — a section of the stream called The Slide, which is usually bare rock. This was a full day after the water crested.

The Slide, along the Coxing, about a day past the crest. Photo by Eric.

15 thoughts on “Flood in a Forest”

  1. Carrie,

    Ah ha! Pardon my patois, but, THIS SHIT IS SO FUCKING COOL!!

    Now I gotta go get my kitchen tidy so I can sleep tonight. (snicker)

  4. Darkmary,

    Wow, what a terrific piece. Just beautiful, and extremely calming. Thank you for sharing. I am comforted thinking that nature has ways of healing itself. This applies to humans and human society to, though the process may be painful, more so if we try to rush it. The poem is about mindfulness and breath and receptivity in the context of what is most concretely real in this world (nature), and that is an approach to guide through any crisis.

  5. Carrie,

    You got my number. Virgo rising in extremis at 28 and change. Not to mention Mars, Saturn, Jupiter. 🙂

    Very perceptive; fellow Virgo?

  6. Pouring through friends’ photos last night and today of the flood damage–covered bridges and roads decimated in Vermont where I lived–the thing that silences me is the loss of trees and wildlife habitat. It takes land and animals time to recover as much as it takes time for people to recover. It is so good those trees on the Grandmother Land (and elsewhere where they remain) are still standing. We need each one of them.

    *****

    Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
    Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
    And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
    Must ask permission to know it and be known.
    The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
    I have made this place around you.
    If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
    No two trees are the same to Raven.
    No two branches are the same to Wren.
    If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
    You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
    Where you are. You must let it find you.
    ~David Wagoner

  9. My main source is the Watershed Post, which has been doing an outstanding job functioning as a gatherer/disseminator of all flood-related news (from papers, gov. agencies, and citizens), and has been running a live blog for several days running with the most up-to-date info. I highly recommend you check them out:

    http://www.watershedpost.com/
    http://twitter.com/#!/watershedpost

    WIOX in Roxbury also has a live stream that has local news updates regularly.

    I have an old hunting cabin (with dreams to create a homestead) in Delaware County (Middletown) about equidistant from Arkville, Fleischmanns, Margaretville and Roxbury, so I’ve been following news from that area most closely. From pictures, videos, and first-hand reports, it is clear that Margaretville, Arkville and Fleischmanns have all been “washed out” in the sense of having had their centers inundated with record-breaking flood waters. Here’s the most recent report from WP on these towns:

    http://www.watershedpost.com/2011/middletown-irene-update

    My beef is with the wording — saying a town has been “erased from the map” is very strong and premature, to put it mildly. Especially in a region where, in living memory, towns were literally erased from the map during the construction of the reservoirs holding NYC’s drinking water. The phrase implies all structures have been swept away or decimated beyond repair, and through all the first-hand reports funneled through WP, I haven’t seen anything indicating quite that level of devastation (thank the gods) in Arkville or any other town in the region.

    That said, it certainly appears that the damage in the Middletown area — and also over in Prattsville — has been severe. Most recently I’ve heard that many of the flooded buildings along Main Street in Margaretville are in danger of collapsing and may be condemned. That just underlines that it’s too early to make a full assessment.

    Personally, I’ll say it’s really troubling to see these already economically troubled places I’ve come to think of as part of my community be so suddenly and dramatically altered, in the process altering the lives of the people who depend on them for livelihood, including friends and neighbors… and being here in Brooklyn, not able to grasp the full extent of it or assist in any real way.

  13. Source was my friend Karen, who was running the Marbletown Rescue Squad. I was not able to confirm what she said via press reports (which doesn’t necessarily mean anything), but what she said was that the town was washed out. What have you got?

  14. Eric, what’s your source that Arkville was “erased from the map”? I’m not seeing anywhere that it was quite that bad in Arkville.

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