The Daily Bucket is a place where we can post and exchange our observations about the natural happenings in our neighborhoods. Birds, bugs, blossoms and more - each notation is a record that we can refer to in the future as we try to understand the natural patterns that are unwinding around us.
Seattle. November 19, 2012.
View through the window of Mr bwren's study, 4:28pm, through raindrops on the window.
First big storm of the year. I woke at 3:30am to the sound of rain on the skylight above the bed. Hard rain. Drenching rain. Rain so loud that it was hard to get back to sleep.
6:30am and the alarm went off in utter darkness. The rain pounded on. As is his morning habit, Mr bwren made us coffee. I drank it thankfully.
This was going to be a diary about the way the fallen leaves in the Forest have melted from ankle deep crunchy piles that bring out the 6 year old in me to sodden masses of goo. How the sunlight stored in those leaves has faded, how it is soaking back into the earth, healing and nourishing the Forest.
But Mr bwren had to travel today, travel through the rain and the wind out to the coast. He almost cancelled, but went, drawn by a promise to deliver a fragment of a friend's history, drawn to another promise of old friends and the company of their children. I couldn't go.
Mr bwren called fifteen minutes after I started writing tonight. He was an hour and a half south of Seattle, 10 miles west of I-5, down in the place that always floods in heavy rain. He'd tried to drive through rising water and didn't make it. Had to abandon the stalled van to wade through rushing knee deep water, carrying his wallet and computer, leaving the fragment of our friend's history, his fiddle and our guitar behind. There wasn't enough time.
He is OK. People who live up the hill from where this happened have taken him in; a neighbor of theirs has a tractor and is prepared to pull the van from the flooded road. This is all I know tonight: he is OK. The rest is just schmatta. Someday this will be a very funny story, but not tonight.
Seattle. 6:40pm, November 19, 2012. 2.46 inches of rain have fallen here in the last 24 hours. There is flooding to the south and west.
Update, Nov 20, 2012, 10:05 am. All is well, though Mr bwren will have some serious adventure stories to tell. Waters receded during the night. He got the van started this morning after some messing around. The instruments are damp but OK; even the friend's fragment of history may survive. All that is completely lost is his iphone and all of the paper maps.
I stopped by the lake this morning and was delighted to spy a mature beaver working the shallows in a place where I've never seen a beaver. This one was huge; one of the biggest I've seen in the lake. Buffleheads, Horned Grebes and Cackling Geese stayed clear of the floating behemoth. The rain has stopped. There is snow in the mountains.
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I'm not sure what my schedule will be today, but will check in with updates when I can. In the meantime, let us know what's happening in your neighborhood.
Carry on.