The Naked Gardener (14 page)

“Oh my God,” she yelled. “What happens if a tent gets hit?”

“Don’t get crazy,” I called to her. And she ran to our tent.

The patter of rain became a drumbeat, louder and more ferocious. I knew the wind would follow. In the darkness of night, it was impossible to tell how big a storm this was going to be. I tried to pick up cues from the sounds but it was no use. We would have to ride it out the best we could. Before I could think about anything else Hope came running across the leafy ground, barefoot, in her pajamas. She pushed her way past me and collapsed on my sleeping bag. “I hate storms.”

With the next flash of lightning she cuddled against Erica like a child and hid her face. Erica put her arms around Hope, who disappeared into Erica’s large frame until they became one.

“It’ll be over soon.” I tried to sound comforting but it came out a bit rougher than I intended, more like a command than a reassurance.

Rain started splattering now, and I could hear that it had reached enough mass that it was also running rapidly off the trees. I had observed this process many times from the coop. Rain falls. It hits the tree leaves. For a while it doesn’t reach the ground. Finally, if it rains hard enough or long enough, the leaves grow heavy and turn down. The rain falls off the leaves and more rain can’t collect on them.

Pattering turned to drumming. Drumming turned to a steady loud hum. And then I heard the unmistakable sound of clicking and I knew it had begun to hail.

Charlene appeared at our tent flaps, followed immediately by Roz. Now we were all crowded together so that if there was a lightning strike, it could hit us all. I was about to say something about at least spreading out to three in two tents but outside the wind picked up and when I pointed the flashlight at the trees I could see the branches bending sideways in the wind and then one of the tents upended and rolled over and over until it wedged on its side against a tree. One zipper flap waved wildly, smacking against the tree trunk

“It’s just a thunderstorm. It will pass quickly. Nothing’s going to happen.” It sounded confident but everyone knew I had no idea what was coming.

Erica rummaged in her small duffel and pulled out a little battery radio. We tried to get a local station but could only hear static so we switched it off to save the battery.

The wind picked up, lightning flashed all around us, rumbles of thunder roared one on top of the other in an endless kettle drumming crescendo. The hail stopped but rain pelted the tent in enormous drops and we could hear the trees swaying like a giant thresher going around and around. The tent was still dry inside but outside rivulets of water were now flowing freely toward the river in a swirling soup of leaves, branches, and mud. I watched out a crack in the tent flap, as the wind whipped around and the treetops bent down.

Charlene and I decided to make a dash to the canoes to drag them back from the river and turn them over to protect whatever we could. By that time our food, equipment, clothes, and whatever else we had left in the canoes had been pummeled by the rain. But we reasoned it was all in duffels or cans and would not have been ruined yet so we had to try before it was really too late. We pulled on our creek shoes, grabbed two flashlights, and with our heads down, we slid through the tent flaps out into the storm.

There’s something about wind and rain hitting you at the same time that seems to get to your bones. Like you have no skin. The transition from the warmth of bodies together in the tent to that howling wind and rushing rain hit us like a cruel wave. And it kept coming. Beneath my feet the ground had turned to such mush it was hard to move forward. With every step it felt as if my creek shoes were pulling me down.

Charlene kept her flashlight steady in front of us but I couldn’t hear anything she said above the wind and pounding rain. We tried to run but it was impossible.

We stopped at the first canoe, and I yelled.

“Let’s drag another one next to this and store the stuff from both in one then turn it over and put the stuff under it.”

She couldn’t hear half of what I yelled so I made hand motions and she nodded. We dragged another one so they sat side by side. We transferred everything into one of them then we dragged the third up away from the river.

I didn’t say anything to Charlene but when I reached the last canoe I scanned my flashlight beam out over the water. It was starting to rise. And flowing very fast. Streams of water and mud ran past my feet onto what had been the dry riverbank. The bank where that afternoon we had pulled out had now disappeared under rising water. This meant the storm was moving from upriver of us, down to us. We were at its leading edge and there was no telling how long it would last.

We had to drag the canoes farther away into the woods where there was no mud so we could hide the gear under the overturned canoes. By the time we finished we were completely soaked through, our hair hanging, dripping water as if we were standing under a shower. We slogged our way back to the tent and backed in one at a time, taking our shoes off outside the tent flaps. The others dried us with towels. We were both shivering.

“How bad is it?” Hope wanted to know.

“Bad,” was all Charlene said.

I didn’t mention the river. I was calculating our food and water supply. No way would we be able to boil that river water now. There would be no fire for cooking breakfast. It was a different river now.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE STORM

I don’t know when I fell asleep or if we all drifted off at the same time. Somehow, even with the storm pounding us, we got so tired that we couldn’t resist closing our eyes. Bunched together like puppies in a basket we huddled in the small tent through it all. I suppose the storm abated after a while and that allowed us some peace. I was chilled through and my feet felt like they’d been in a tub of ice. It was good to feel the warmth of other bodies against mine after the struggle to secure the canoes and all our gear, fighting against the wind and rain.

I slept deeply at times, at others I woke abruptly at a sharp crack or perhaps only a dream of one. Breaking branches, I thought dimly, and went back to sleep.

In the morning there was no dawn chorus. I peered out from between the tent flaps like a wary animal. It seemed that the whole forest had erupted since yesterday. It had the violent look of a battle scene. Branches littered the ground. Some stuck straight up in the air, some stacked one atop the other, their leaves all askew, hanging down with their undersides, bright green with a whitish tint, exposed.

One large tree limb had cracked and was hanging suspended just over the canoes. It looked like the tiniest breeze might dislodge its tenuous connection to the tree trunk, sending it crashing down. I thought I should move the canoes but what if the branch crashed down on me? Leaves and small branches covered everything in a disordered maze.

“What a night.”

Valerie sat up, stretched, yawned.

“Shhh.” Roz put a finger to her lips. “What’s that sound?”

“What sound? It’s blessedly quiet after that horrible storm,” Charlene sat up and pulled at the tent flap.

“What
is
that sound?” Erica asked.

I had heard it, too. And I knew what it was, that sound I would never forget.. Exactly as I had heard it years ago.

I pushed at the tent flaps and pulled on my creek shoes.

We all tumbled out of the tent and saw it at the same time. The raging river. Gushing past just grazing the edge of one canoe. A large tree limb had fallen over it during the night and landed upside down, with the underside of the leaves facing the sky so they looked pale and strange. It couldn’t have happened too long ago because the leaves were not yet wilted.

Hope picked her way through the rubble and branches until she stood at the river’s edge. I followed close behind and we stood there, arms crossed, very still. What had been a peaceful, lazy, clear stretch of water was now a roiling, muddy, torrent. For the first time on this trip I was afraid. Not because I thought we couldn’t survive out here. But because I felt such a strong urge to ride this river.

“I had no idea a river could change so much,” Hope said.

Charlene and Roz tried to pull the canoe back from the water. The branch groaned. Pulling got them nowhere. They dragged a heavier branch over and stuck it under the end of the branch lying on the canoe, then wedged this under the heavier one and using it as a lever were able to lift the branch off the canoe. Then we all tied a rope around the higher end and pulled it back and away long enough to drag the canoe out from under it. When we were done we just stood there in a kind of daze.

“Oh God,” said Valerie. “The stuff’s all mangled and soaked.”

For the first time we looked around. It was as if a bomb had detonated all around us. Trees had been cracked in half. They hung one atop the other, branches tilted at odd angles, leaves askew. Some trees just a little way from where we had slept were twisted at the top like a giant had wrung them out and tossed the tops away. Rivers of mud had swept past the tent leaving deep crevices and piles of leaves behind. Broken branches littered the ground. Where we had made a fire was now a mud bog. And past it all flowed the relentless river, churning, brown, opaque where the day before it had been clear and placid.

Then we saw the tent that had blown against a tree and gotten wedged there. Its side had torn, its flaps lay back like an open wound.

“Look,” Roz pointed to the tent she had shared. A twisted off tree top had squashed it flat.

“Must have been a mini tornado,” I said as we surveyed the wreckage. Valerie started to shake and couldn’t stop. We all gathered around her but she just kept shaking like a bobble head. Even her teeth chattered.

“Come on,” I said, “let’s get the canoes turned and see what we can find to eat. We’ll clean them off and we’ll be fine.” I led her away and placed her shaking hands on a canoe. “I’m sure we’ll be okay. We just have to wait. The storm’s over now.”

But it was like the storm was still raging and she was stuck in its eye. The reality of it was over, but the thought of it stuck. As we bent over the canoe to turn it right side up, she looked sideways at me, her head going up and down like a little bird twitching on a limb. “I could have been in that tent. We could have been killed.”

“But we weren’t. Come on help me turn this over.”

We righted the canoe. Then we moved over to the one Charlene and I had lifted during the storm. It was obvious our theory hadn’t worked well or provided much protection from the rain. Everything was sodden and heavy. The canoe facing right side up had a pool of water in the bottom. We lifted the other one off and turned it over. At least that one wasn’t swamped.

I pulled a rope out of one of the duffels and we strung it between two tree trunks as high off the ground as high as possible and pulled it as taut as we could. Then we started hanging things over it to dry out. We couldn’t spread anything on the muddy ground to dry so we hung things from broken tree limbs and fallen trees wherever there was enough room to keep them from touching the ground. I grabbed the rope from the tree limb and we tied this between two trees also and thus worked our way through the mess.

The others unpacked whatever fresh food we had left, some fruit, tomatoes, hard boiled eggs, bread. At least the food had been stored in plastic containers and bins. There was no way to make a fire so we ate everything cold and drank juices. When we were fed, we took turns going off to the woods, and then we used bottled water to brush our teeth. Bathing was out of the question. Even cleaning the mud off our feet was a useless exercise. With every step more mud attached itself to our shoes. We were mired in it. The sky was still gray, heavy with low rolling clouds but it didn’t seem like it would rain again.

We tried to lift the tree limb off of the squashed tent but could not budge it. I untied a rope from the stern of one canoe and we tied this to the limb and tried and tried but nothing was going to move that monster limb so we dropped the idea and untied the rope. Better to use it as a clothesline we agreed and suspended the rest of our wet gear and duffels from it.

We stopped to rest and have some more juice and, with the immediate work finished, we turned toward the river.

“Well we’re really in the shit now, aren’t we?” Erica asked.

Roz added, “How long are we going to stay here?”

“The pastor from church was going to pick me up this afternoon when we got to the landing above the falls,” Hope said quietly. “What is he going to think happened to us?”

“Maze is going to go berserk,” I said, almost to myself. “He was going to pick me up there, too.”

“Will was coming to meet the rest of us.” Erica stared at the water. “I wonder what the river looks like at the falls.”

“The landing must be swamped,” I said. “There’s no way anyone could meet us there anyway.”

“I doubt the doctor will be chewing his nails over me. He’s probably in surgery and doesn’t know what day I’m supposed to be back or that I’m even gone.”

I picked up a tall, fairly straight stick that was lying near my foot. I walked just to the edge of the water and stuck the fatter end into the mud until it wouldn’t go any deeper.

“What’s that for?” Charlene stood next to me, her shoes looked like mud pies. Some of it had dried to a dull beige around the edges.

“To tell if the river has crested or it’s still rising. I have no idea how many streams run into this above here. Or below for that matter.”

I notched a mark at the current water line and both of us stared at the water moving by us fast, swirling and whooshing, sometimes carrying a tree branch, leaves tumbling and shaking. Every once in a while a group of dead limbs all tangled together rushed along on the water like a runaway raft. There were still no birds singing. The forest had an eerie feel to it, as if everything had died overnight.

We busied ourselves with cleaning the canoes, bailing out the water, shaking our towels and clothes free of leaves and debris. The sun came out intermittently until the last of the clouds rolled away leaving the bright blue sky above us. It was still early. The air began to warm. I heard the first bird chip in a nearby tree and then others answered. The forest began to return to normal. So did we. But without saying it out loud, all of us were unsure of the next move. After collapsing the one remaining usable tent and rolling it away in its bag, we stood around one of the canoes.

“Well, we have to decide what to do,” I said.

Erica looked from face to face.

Roz sighed and shrugged. Hope turned sideways to me, as if I had the answer.

“I’m willing to try it. I don’t want to hang out here for days just getting hungry and sleeping six to a tent.” Charlene finished by kicking her shoe against the canoe to knock off some of the mud.

“It looks pretty rough,” I told her. “Maybe you and I could handle it but what about the others?” We stared at the river again as if it could give us some sort of guidance. The stick was still at the edge of the water. At least the river wasn’t risinghigher.

“Maybe the river will go down some by the afternoon,” said Hope. “How far do we still have to go?”

I took out the map and spread it on a canoe seat. I found about where we were and pointed to the landing above the falls before the bridge.

“We’re farther down river than I had planned for the last day. So we don’t have as far to go as we did the first two days.” I looked up at the river. “With the water running this fast we could cover that in a couple of hours I think. But that’s not the problem.”

“What is?” Valerie asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Roz motioned to the river.

“Listen,” I said, “let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s wait awhile, make a plan for how to navigate the river and see if it goes down some. If we wait until later this afternoon, it could be okay.”

I got my Swiss Army knife out and cut the torn tent loose. We untangled it from the fallen tree as best we could and stretched it out on a couple of flat rocks by the water.We dragged some large tree branches over to the rocks and constructed a rough bench of sorts, then cut up pieces of tent for mats to sit on and later eat what was left of our food. We busied ourselves cleaning our gear, drying out whatever we could, restoring order from the rubble the storm had created. With the roar of the river filling the forest, I gathered the women around and talked about what to expect on the river whenever we decided to take it on.

* * *

I watched the stick I had marked to see if the river was rising or receding. For the hours before it was time for lunch it held steady and then the water level began to drop. While still roiling and muddy, the river seemed to be losing some of its fury.

We ate what food we had left, packed up our gear, cleaned the rest of the water and debris out of the canoes and packed them up. Then we just watched the river for a long time.

“We can’t stay here another night,” I finally said to the others.

They all nodded. It was time to take our chances.

“Now we all have to wear life vests.”

We had left them out and now slipped into them, tied them closed over our chests and picked up our paddles.

“Remember, this water is going to feel different than it did before. What you have to do is maintain your speed. Don’t let the current take control,” I warned. “The objective is to stay ahead of the river. That’s the only way you can hold your course.”

“What happens if we capsize?” Roz asked. “Do the others try to pick them up or what?”

“No,” I said. “If that happens, just don’t fight the water. It will carry you down stream. Your life vest will keep your head above water. Try to steer yourself toward a bank or a tree you can grab onto or something stable. Just keep your head up and do not panic. If anyone goes over, we’ll keep going so we can bring help back.”

“Maybe we should just stay here,” said Hope. “Eventually someone will find us. Or the river will go down and then we can paddle safely.”

“How long?” Charlene asked. “How long could we stay here? We have almost no water left. Little food. And how long will it take for the river to get back to normal? Two days? Three days?”

“I don’t know,” Hope said. She looked out at the water and repeated, “I just don’t know.”

“And how about when we get to the falls?” asked Roz. “Do we go over?”

“No,” I said. “Since the put in above the falls is flooded for sure, we’ll aim for the big old dock. You know, the one they built for the logging and quarrying operations so long ago? At the old lady’s house? It’s much higher off the water because they used it to offload materials from the big barges they pushed down the river. I’m sure that dock isn’t under water. We’ll head for that.”