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.