This morning for the first time in several days we saw a fat sliver of sun. We think that’s what it was, anyway. It was in the southern sky, and it opened and then snapped shut quickly, like the fly window on an old Volkswagen Bug. The wind was rushing in from the West.
There is a quiet morning-after feeling like there always is after a big earthquake or a whopping deluge or a ferocious windstorm. For the moment it has stopped raining, and the temperature is dropping, which is a good thing.
The horses got their raincoats off. Willen was very pleased; he hates his raincoat and always tries to twist it off or rub it off anyway. He just got a new one for Christmas and he has already torn one of the leg straps. How rude.
Personally I like a nice jacket, something with a fleece lining if possible and a waterproof 1200 denier ripstop outer shell. By the way, my birthday is in June, and I wear a size XL (if it is a dog coat). And a “medium-large Nigerian Doe” if it is a goat coat.
Speaking of my birthday, I also like Swedish Fish (the red ones), but other than that I never eat seafood.
All the East-West mountain passes are closed. The freeway is closed for a twenty mile stretch through Chehalis on the North-South corridor with two feet of water over the road and the three rivers in that area yet to crest. The trains aren’t running because the tracks are flooded. So if you want to get out of Seattle right now you need an airplane to do it.
In our little corner of the Sound, the farmer drove halfway across a little bridge in the dark last night before realizing that there was water about six inches over the road. It was just a little creek, but for some reason it thought it was a river. Anyway, once you are halfway across it’s better to just keep going, and that’s what the farmer did without any problem. Luckily, should the need have arisen, the farmer floats – I have seen this myself - like a can of beer.
Lost Beaver Lake has filled in completely. Every valley in the whole western half of the state is just about completely flooded, which doesn’t lend much credence to last year’s talk of the December ‘07 flood being a 100-year flood. But even though it is terrible, sometimes it is also beautiful.
Anyway, at some point if you get a 100-year flood every year you have to think about calling it something else.
And a one-year flood doesn’t sound very good.
But I’m just a little white goat, what do I know.
