The Creek Always Rises

It has been raining in Northwest Indiana just about all summer long. It sure seems that way at least. When it hasn't been raining, its been humid and hot. Really hot. You can tell that I'm not much of a summer lover. Come to think of it, we really didn't have much of a spring either.

The last two days have been the worst. My friend mjd posted yesterday about carrying buckets of water up a flight of stairs, trying to hold down the fort until help arrived. In Highland, a few miles north of here, my daughter's friend lost most of her belongings. She and her son have moved in with mom and dad until she can find another place. Today she was wading through her ground floor apartment in hip boots with rubber gloves and a mask looking for items that might be saved. Once again family, friends and strangers have come forward to lend a hand.

We, on the other hand, are fortunate to have a dry basement. Our house sits up on a hill that overlooks a usually small winding stretch of water. On down the way, it feeds into Turkey Creek. Back in the day it remained just a little drink of water, no matter how much it rained. When they turned the nearby farms into fields of concrete, all the runoff headed our way. With a normal rain we see the creek rise about a foot. When we get heavy rains, this is what happens...

The water has risen to the top of an 8 foot retaining wall. The picture above is the same area you see in the picture below, which was taken sppring of '05. If you look close you will see the Great Blue Heron wading in "ankle deep" water. These were drier days.


Several years ago, when this was my mother's place, one of the town politicos came by. It was near election time so he decided he'd like to see, up close and personal, the soil erosion caused by the larger and stronger currents of water that accompanied the heavy rains. He brought in an engineer, who brought in a bulldozer, that was going to straighten out all the bends in the creek. I'm not quite sure what his end goal was, except that even in my feeble mind I knew that the current would have been faster and harder, gathering steam as it reached the turn. I suspect that it would have aided the runoff from mall parking lots a little up the road. What was a mild erosion problem would have been multiplied exponentially. My mom was beside herself as they fired up the heavy machinery. They had no intention of waiting for her lawyer. I coudn't think of anything else to do but stand in front of the bulldozer. Which I did. To this day, I don't know how I mustered up the nerve to do that, but it worked. They stopped long enough for help to arrive and send them on their way. I'm glad no-one actually knew how close I came to having wet trousers.

Mom's gone now. Most times the water just meanders down and round the curve, heading toward Turkey Creek. But everytime we get a heavy rain and the creek rises, I think of my mom and that bulldozer. God willin'.