DUMMERSTON — I'm embarrassed to admit that like many folks in the area, I went about the task of readying for Tropical Storm Irene with half a heart.
As a retired EMT, I believe in preparedness, but I felt reasonably sure that I wouldn't seriously have a need for the full gas tank I pumped and the water I purchased. I filled my prescriptions and took other precautions, but like the majority of folks that I saw at the grocery store, I was looking forward to Sunday as a day to stay at home and relax.
I was wrong.
At 10 a.m. that Sunday, as the rains began to fall in earnest, I went to the backyard to watch the West River from the home of Tom and Lou Zopf in Dummerston, where I was a houseguest.
It was mesmerizing. The river was moving fast and was going about the business of clearing its banks of debris. I couldn't see any of the usual rocks in the cloudy water, and I watched as dead trees, branches, pine boughs, and deadwood moved quickly past my view.
Often, I've sat by the river in this very spot, enjoying the sight of people leisurely bobbing down the river in large inner tubes. Sometimes these river travelers would be enjoying a cold beverage as they held onto ropes to keep two tubes together as they traveled along the gentle current. Most linger long enough going past the house that we can have a lively conversation and exchange pleasantries before they pass from view and disappear past the bend in the river that then brings them to Dummerston's famous covered bridge.
As I lost myself in that thought, I noticed that the river had risen dramatically in just a matter of moments.
I was standing next to an old child's swing set, which had been fashioned into a holder for a two-person swinging seat; I decided not to sit there, as the water was within a foot of the structure.
Moments later, I noticed a remarkable difference in the items now floating down the river. Over the next 15 minutes, I counted five red plastic gas tanks and four coolers before noticing that the river had picked up its pace significantly.
The water was now lapping at my sandals at the far corner of the swing set. I stood back another foot and noted a lilac bush as a marker of the water's movement.
I went back to looking at the river.
* * *
The debris was changing. The trees bobbing along were obviously alive. The majority of them had a circumference of about a foot and included their root balls, empty of all dirt.
The trees were tall, and I wondered if they were the ones next to the river bank or if they were from yards farther up the valley.
The man-made items were changing now, and growing in size.
A child's sandbox floated past, a plastic play house, a picnic bench, more coolers, gas cans and balls, all manner of balls, basketballs, rubber balls, baseballs, and a plastic bat.
One enormous truck tire zoomed past.
Then someone's woodpile whizzed by. Chunks of wood, neatly and deliberately cut the same lengths and carefully split, moved concurrently in a line across the river as though in a race. A few big stumps flew past right after. Had the wood pile been split on those?
* * *
The water was lapping at my sandals again, and I stepped back another foot. I glanced to my right and realized the water was now up to the lilac bush. The river had now widened by about 3 feet in 15 minutes.
I moved back again and realized that the water was now moving through trees to my left and filling in the areas of the yard to my right. I chose another spot where a 3-foot-tall Tiki torch marked an area where I could measure the water again.
The debris on the main part of the river was moving much faster now. I noticed a tree across the river on the hill below Route 30 lean into the river. Its branches were now caught, and it was only a matter of time before it was pulled in.
The water had risen almost to the height of the swinging chair on the swing set. The table and the stump had vanished. I hadn't even seen them disappear into the water.
I thought about the full gas tank in my car and suddenly wondered if I might need it after all. But no, there was another 200 feet going up to the house. It just couldn't be possible that the river would rise that far. The Zopfs had told me that in all the time they had owned the house, water had never gone past the swing set.
Soon, the first foot of the Tiki torch was covered in water and the swing now had water lapping under its wooden slats. I saw a flash of lightning and decided it was time to go back inside the house.
As I turned and as I walked, I noticed that the grass was so laden with water that I was sinking down anywhere between one and four inches.
* * *
As I came to the front of the house, I met a West Dummerston Fire and Rescue truck coming down Camp Arden Road.
The young driver told me that the river was expected to go over the road and that while we weren't being asked to evacuate, it would be a good idea to start packing a bag.
I thanked him and turned toward the house. It was then that I realized that if the water flooded the road, it would also likely be taking our cars with it.
As I began to report what I saw outside to Lou and Tom, we went to turn on the television to the Weather Channel. A beep was coming from the television along the bottom of the screen telling us that we were to expect flash flooding in the Newfane area.
Looking out the window in the room where the television sits, the Tiki torch was gone, hidden under the water.
A neighbor arrived to visit just in time to look out the window and see the swing set with the swing still attached depart the shore and become part of the river debris. It had been set hard into the ground and had been there for years.
It took less than two minutes for the river to pull its legs out of the ground and take it under water. Thirty seconds later, it was totally gone from view. The neighbor went home to move one of his vehicles to higher ground.
Emergency personnel returned to the door and told us they were evacuating everyone on the road. Where the Falls Brook met Camp Arden Road, the water had creeped over the road, and they wanted us to leave before more segments flooded. They also confirmed my observations: the river was rising at least one foot per hour.
* * *
The next hour was a blur as we decided to empty the basement in case the water came much higher up the back yard.
There was now a falls in the area of the trees to the left of the yard we dubbed “Little Niagara.” It was moving at a tremendous clip. Occasionally, I would look out to the river as we rolled up all the rugs on the first floor and hauled books, boxes, paintings, and a full freezer up from the basement.
I don't know which was more frightening: seeing the contents of people's yards move across the water, or viewing the beams, wood, boards, and huge trees with three-foot diameters now floating down the river, gray and moving even faster.
The power went out. More emergency workers arrived at the door. An entire LP gas tank - one of the big ones used to provide gas for a home - had been spotted on the river. We were told if one exploded and we were close to the river we could be badly hurt.
We moved faster, packed our bags, and drove up Green Mountain Camp Road.
At Green Mountain Camp, at least five other cars were parked there, obviously placed to provide their owners with a fast getaway if necessary. We drove past them and on to the house of a friend on Waterman Road, where there was no water to chase us away.
Two hours went by. The rain let up. The sun came out.
The entire day might have felt like a dream except for my tired body reminding me of all the hustle and bustle of the previous hours.
We left to drive back to the house. Along the way, I stopped at the covered bridge, which had been closed to traffic, and met with a few neighbors to discuss the day's events.
We shared rumors: A covered bridge had been pulled into a river. Downtown Brattleboro was covered in water. A woman had lost her life in Wilmington. Jamaica had houses which were now in the river and disappeared.
I thought back to the beams and lumber I had seen floating on the river. Was it the remnants of those homes?
When I got home, I checked the backyard. The water had come within one foot of the house.
I was able to get on the Internet, as the power had been restored. Videos were already on the web showing the devastation throughout the county.
* * *
It was difficult for anyone I met that day to register what was happening. The mind has a tremendous ability to deny the obvious.
All of a sudden, numbers of calls I had made over the years when I was an EMT for Rescue Inc. started to make sense. I had wondered how people could have possibly gotten themselves into some of the emergencies I had witnessed.
They often spoke using the same words as I was thinking: “It couldn't possibly happen here.”
When we reach the limits of our tolerance of everything that is so suddenly different, the mind will go to any lengths to reach normalcy.
The flooding affected the same areas that were hit by the Hurricane of 1938. We recovered after that terrible catastrophe, and life went on then.
Other than the stains that show the high water mark on riverbanks or one's clothing, the river reset itself and resumed flowing as it did, fooling the mind into thinking that it all must have been a dream.
But it wasn't. The whole edge of the river was retooled.
And being forced to get used to the sight of that new path of the river, to get used to a whole new visual landscape, began to ground me to accepting the tragic losses from our beloved river, to turn it from the unreal to our new reality.