flood stage

I went down to Riverside Park to check out the river in flood Wednesday afternoon. Riverside Park is pretty high up from the river with long fairly steep banks and switchback walkways down to a fishing deck. But unfortunately no good canoe ramp. I wasn't the only one. There were quite a few of the townspeople coming and going doing the same thing as me.

I took a few pictures and my first video ever which I have managed to embed in this post (I think. I followed all the instructions and it appears to be here but I won't know for sure til I hit publish. edit I guess you need Adobe Flash plug-in to see the video. It shows up fine on my screen but Marc can't see it on his). The pictures don't really convey the immensity of the amount of water here, and more to come, partially because you don't have a before picture to compare it to but also because, as I found after being a river guide for a few years in a majestic canyon, pictures of power often fall flat. At least they do when I take them.

Anyway... Here's some photos of the high water and my video which I made so you could see how fast the water is moving.

Water is powerful stuff. A person can drown in a foot of water if the force of the moving water is strong enough. I saw lots of examples of the power of water during my years as a river guide and not only it's effects on the physical world.

When I realized I hadn't seen the last, sweep boat in too long, I stopped and waited. When I saw a bailer and a water bottle float past me I started back upstream to find one of the most capable among us had gotten his boat wrapped around a boulder in two feet of water and he and his paddling partner had not been able to free it even after they unloaded it.

It's a great metaphor for life I think. The stone age cultures certainly thought so.