Disaster in Paradise. Amanda Bath

roar coming down the creek draw. I went running down our path to the creek, and got there in time to see a one to two-foot high (above the “normal” level of the creek these days) surge of chocolate-coloured water come past the community intake. After I got back to the house, I heard some more booming and roaring up the valley somewhere, and as I write this, I can hear occasional boulders rolling in the creek up there.

      When I was on our trail near the creek, I could not hear the roar of the coming surge over the normal creek noise until a couple of seconds before I saw it. I think the Gar Creek draw is a VERY DANGEROUS place to be for a while (few days). This also applies to our driveway where it crosses the creek. By the way, the washout on our driveway is now too wide to safely jump across.

      Be safe, Loran

      Loran—contemplative and acutely observant of the natural world—was our prophet, calling in the wilderness. He monitored the changes in Gar Creek as they occurred, and this was the first of two warnings he gave us by email. But, in the past, he’d sometimes speculated about hypothetical scenarios that hadn’t transpired and I tended to take what he said with a pinch of salt. I persuaded myself that this trouble was something happening “up the hill,” irrelevant to me. I closed his message and opened the next email.

      The continued surges in the creek severed the emergency waterline from Moss Beard Spring on Gerry Rogers’s land to the community’s water distribution box across the creek, which supplied potable water to eighteen households on the south side of the Landing. This waterline was itself a temporary fix after the avalanche in February had wrecked and buried the permanent intake. The icy avalanche debris had not yet fully melted away. Local residents and several visitors were currently working on the waterlines in and out of the creek.

      My sister-in-law, Renata Klassen, drove into the Landing mid-morning from where she now lived in Kaslo with Lennie, her elderly golden retriever cross, and provisions for a two-week stay in the post office cabin. This tiny dwelling, a treasured heritage landmark, had offered shelter to countless temporary residents over the years.

      Renata, six years younger than Christopher, is a free-spirited woman who prefers not to be tied to one place. Where Christopher resembles their mother, Ren looks like Hanno, their father. She has his piercing blue eyes, a square jaw and a head of glorious, thick, copper-blonde hair.

      Renata immediately remarked on the pungent smell from the creek. I took her up to the road above the house to show her the area of creek bank beside the culvert I was so worried about. We devised a plan, and Ren quickly collected two heaping wheelbarrow loads of gravel and some big rocks, and helped me improvise sandbags by filling a tarp with gravel and laying the sausage-like roll alongside the leaky bank. She had the physique for such tasks and I was encouraged by her presence and positive energy beside me. We anchored the gravel sausage with the rocks and stood back to admire our handiwork. It was a relief to have done something and I felt proud of our achievement. Such a tiny endeavour, but it was comforting and seemed to do the trick.

      I’d made some vegetable soup and we had lunch together, also polishing off a big salad from the garden. Ozzie woke up and seemed delighted to see Ren as she grabbed him for a cuddle. Apart from Christopher and me, only Renata and Virginia (my mother-in-law) were permitted to take such liberties. Ren complimented me on my soup, then went down to the post office cabin to unpack and feed Lennie.

      I spent my afternoon on the deck weaving a trellis to support Christopher’s sweet pea plants. They stood four centimetres tall in smart new cedar planters, their delicate tendrils groping for support. Beaver-gnawed twigs from the beach became a triangular frame, and I wove a dream-catcher-like web inside with sinew. The task took several hours and I became stiff from squatting on the ground. Ozzie watched with interest from a deck chair, occasionally batting at the tail end of the sinew, but mostly content just observing the curious things that humans do with their time.

      That night I was afraid. I lay in bed, sleepless and apprehensive, wishing Christopher were with me. The creek boomed under the bridge across the yard, its smell so oppressive I wondered if the house might already be inundated. At midnight I couldn’t contain my worry, so I jumped out of bed and grabbed a flashlight to check the bank above the house. The gravel sausage seemed to be holding things together but the beam of light illuminated the thick gushing slurry that splattered the tarp and plastered every grass blade on the bank. I returned to bed and slept fitfully through the rest of the night.

      Thursday, July 12

      The day dawned as perfect a summer’s day as you could wish for. The glass crystal that hung in the kitchen window sent rainbows of morning sunlight dancing over the walls and ceiling. A chipmunk scurried along the window ledge among the leaves and tendrils of Virginia creeper that had smothered the east wall and gradually crept across the windowpane. We hacked it back whenever it threatened to hide our view behind leafy fingers of soft green light.

      A longer email from Loran, sent in the early hours, described what he was observing in Gar Creek. My heart sank as I read about the increasingly powerful surges in water volume. I wrote an email to everyone in the community describing my concern that the bank might give way under the pressure from the one culvert that was channelling almost all the water. I wrote, “I wonder if Highways could be persuaded to come out to clear the blocked culvert? It would also prevent the road itself from washing out.” Then I shut my MacBook and hurried to get dressed because Jillian and I were going to Kaslo.

      I turned off the radio, then collected my purse, list and shopping bags and set them by the front door. I ate a quick breakfast and afterwards went to the garden to empty the compost bucket and say goodbye to Renata; she was putting things in jars, hanging up her clothes and settling into the cabin. I cut some peonies and foxgloves and put them in a vase on the mauve picnic table. We’d moved it onto the lawn next to the cabin because the beach was underwater.

      Renata told me she’d already taken Lennie for a long walk beside the creek that morning. On the way back she threw the tennis ball for him, trying not to send it down the ravine, but of course it did roll over and Lennie plunged after it. He had a struggle climbing back up the steep bank so Ren got down on her hands and knees and pulled him up. He was tired when they got back, and now lay snoozing on the cool cabin floor.

      Ren and I said goodbye, then at ten to nine I closed the front door of our house and walked up the grassy path past the water box and Ruth Burt’s precious California redwood tree, now more than four metres tall and growing fast. I took a last look at our improvised sandbagging, wondering if it would hold until I got back after lunch. Crossing the road I climbed the bank to our shortcut trail through a patch of birch and wild roses. The ground was loamy from years of leaf mulch, and was sprinkled with calypso orchids and tiny white queen’s cup in spring. Now it was shady and dappled green with clumps of sphagnum moss. A varied thrush sang as I walked.

      An ancient cedar tree stood at the top of the trail beside the road, its enormous hairy trunk the biggest landmark around. Owls roosted here, I knew from the piles of pellet droppings I saw on the ground in one particular spot. Kurt’s driveway lay across the road from the big cedar and I took a moment to pop up to his greenhouse and check the tomato plants.

      A few metres farther along the road, past the double cottonwood trees, and after the road made its second creek crossing, I took another shortcut up the steep bank, this time a dry and dusty path, barely shaded by sparse and straggling jack pines. Then I was on the road again, my route overlooking Gar Creek all the way up to Creek Corner. The formerly crystalline, delicate watercourse was a pounding, murky, stinking presence. It felt ominous, frightening, and I was beginning to loathe that earthy-pine smell.

      I wondered what Jillian and John were making of the sudden change and was looking forward to meeting up with Jillian to talk about it. I hurried along thinking about Kaslo and our house there. Chores awaited, I knew. I could imagine what the grass looked like—I’d be up to my ears in things to do, certainly.

      I was wearing a summer dress I didn’t like for its dull checked pattern, selected only because it was sleeveless and cool cotton. I’d examined and rejected so many other more beautiful summer dresses. But I did put on two precious pieces of jewellery. One was a small jade bear necklace I’d given to my mother a few years before.