A Steady Rain

My heart goes out to those affected by the Arkansas flood with the memory of and the ongoing recovery from middle Tennessee's millennial flood fresh on my mind. To have a tragedy such as befell the campers happen so fast and so unexpectedly is particularly poignant. In our watery trial, as a family, we only sustained relatively minor property damage although several tons of driftwood that washed into our yard because a man-made drainage ditch that abuts two sides of my parents' home leading into a branch of Richland Creek that runs through the back of our yard and evacuates the hardest afflicted area of West Nashville taking water toward the Cumberland River from Bellevue remain trapped in our treeline. But our travail is nothing compared to the twenty-three deaths with a man still missing here or the dozens dead or missing now in our neighboring state of Arkansas. I know my parents, who were literally trapped in their home as their bridge which is the only street access was covered with rushing water as the tide lapped into our basement, garage, and wine cellar, are now gun shy every time there is a sustained rain. Even the family pets, two dogs, had their behavior probably forever altered by the terror generated by our watery ordeal. A valued reader of this blog also described similar changes with her own flood-afflicted dog Sarah. God forbid you and yours are ever afflicted with a similar natural disaster and God bless those touched by the horror in the campgrounds in the Razorback state.