100 Years

Sun rose over flood conditions today after 3-7 inches of rain overnight.

When this much rain fell in the city, earlier this summer, swans swam in the bike path running alongside the canal and water stood still in the basements of old houses.

Out here, over mostly undeveloped land, water is free to find its own way: pooling here in a low field, cutting a new path there through the trees.

The house is built on a small hill with a basement that is essentially all above ground. It looks west and north. And as the foliage thinned a view over gently rolling hills slowly revealed itself. Two weeks ago we put in gutters. The gutters divert the water away from the foundation of the house and down the hill towards the woods in back.

I woke up to a river, there, just 20 meters from the back of the house. What was previously a shallow gully of soggy dirt is now a bubbling brook. As it flows towards the northern boundary of our property it falls over large rocks in a series of cascades, filling our woods with the sound of waterfalls.

That the back lot forest is dotted with wetlands is not news to me. But, today, we got to see its contours. Crossing the brook, following the water down a series of steps, we see that the small river joins the large on our neighbor's lot. In the acute angle between the two waterways lies our forest: a mix of deciduous and conifer trees, a stretch of marsh (wading, today, the usually dry trail), a few overgrown, recently-made clearings, and lines of stonewalls which mark the old boundaries of abandoned sheep pastures.

What will this area look like in 50 years? 150? More rain will fall. The climate in on track to get wetter. Temporary puddles will become permanent ponds. Perhaps our forest will flood from the northeastern tip inward toward the house. And from our house on the hill looking east we will watch as lakes spread and rivers merge. And then there will always be the sound of water.