For use: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 and thereafter

mfinley.com: "River Rise"

by Michael Finley

[7:45 AM today, alongside the Mississippi in Saint Paul, a mile south of Fort Snelling]

It is a remarkable thing to see. My dog Beau is trotting down a path he has walked a hundred times. The woods there are paved with brown cottonwood leaves, papered together by autumn rains. They are nearly one thing now, a loose carpet of leaves. Then, suddenly, the carpet gives way under Beauregard, and he sinks into the river below. The river, as it rose, lifts the entire forest carpet in one piece. The dog's weight has punched a hole in the illusion. It is like disappearing into a mirror.

I am fascinated by rising water. Looked at from a distance, the river is a single sheet of water. But it has an edge that is usually very small -- a rivulet of water moving forward a tablespoon at a time. If you can find this exploring tongue of water, you can walk alongside it as it leads the river to new places, like a bull on a ring.

You understand geology better. These hills you tramped over so many times are no longer hills once the water rises. They are sandy islands, fashioned from the slabs of sand deposited from an earlier flood, then rolled round and hilly by the currents of this one.

Floods are a killing evil to human communities, but the river never asked us to establish ourselves on its banks. Upriver, the water sweeps things away one layer at a time, like a grocer cleaning his shelves. One time, I looked out by the hydroelectric station under the Ford Parkway bridge to see a flotilla of white plastic bleach jugs bobbing their way downstream -- thousands of them, gawking like stiff-necked tourists.

As a puppy Beauregard benefited from floods. The November day we brought him home it snowed, and that winter was the snowiest in Minnesota ever. All winter he stayed indoors and learned civilized ways. Then, when the snows melted, and the river rose, they sealed the flooded parklands off from traffic, and the riverbanks were ours to wander. We played for hours in the sand and crud.

In the spring of 1997, the crest of the river passing through Minneapolis was topped with plastic shopping bags. Since they were the high point at the moment water levels fell, the bags impaled themselves at the 18 foot above flood stage level. Plastic bags filled the trees and bushes, but only at a certain height, like a ghostly garland hung along the wooded shore, or bleached laundry clothes-pinned on a line. It took the breezes of several summers for the bags to tear free and undo the effect.

There is a pond by the Crosby Farm, one of the first settlements in the state, where park workers had built a walkout of stout beams and steel pontoons. Many times we would walk past that massive raft, where Hmong men and their sons caught sunnies and crappies for supper.

In the flood of 1997, the river completely swamped that pond, and the raft vanished. A year later, Beau and I were cutting through some brush a mile and a half from the pond, and we found the pontoon raft, perched against an immense cottonwood trunk, its steel barrels staved in, and the giant beams splintered asunder. The flood had transported the bridge in the night and set it against the tree.

It's all filthy. When the river tips it abolishes separation. River water, drinking water, sewer water, rain water, waste water, gasoline from cars and underground reservoirs, and the fluids sucked from sodden cemeteries all flows together and forms a common army. Once the flood lies down on your mattresses, you don’t want your mattresses back.

What is most astonishing to me is how the river comes roaring back each time. A year after Pike Island was almost entirely submerged under a tide of this filth, it was a paradise of green. All the deadwood was swept away, and all that remained was shot full of light. The only downside was that, in the aftermath of  uprooting, certain weeds like stinging nettles gain a foothold, and now they dominate the forest floor, making it impossible to walk through in short pants or bare arms in the summertime.

In the wake of the flood, the animals become bolder. Beavers establish themselves within earshot of the city. I have seen coyotes prowling the scrub near the coal-burning plant. Snapping turtles venture inland to lay their eggs in dry soil. Blue herons soar just below the airport. The deer stare boldly at you, because you cannot get to them.

Think of the carp who swam into a new inlet made by the rushing water, how happy they were to eat bugs and plants which had never before been underwater. And now unhappy they will be a few days hence, when the flood recedes, and the way out is sealed up, and the sun goes to work, and the oxygen in the puddle is depleted, and the liquid seeps into the sand.

The river is rearranging the furniture of the world. Wait, until the new order becomes clear.

  Copyright (c) 2001 by Michael Finley

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