Rain (67)

California has been bombarded lately by atmospheric river events: constant, sometimes very heavy rain, if not thunder, lightning, and hail. It hasn't been too bad here in Monterey, but areas throughout the state are experiencing flooding, power outages, trees down—the works. 

According to the Monterey County Sheriff's Office, tomorrow the Salinas River may overflow its banks and cut the peninsula off to the east and north for at least a few days.

We experienced similar flooding in 1995:
this is Highway 68, the Monterey–Salinas Hwy,
at the Spreckels Avenue exit, surrounded by the
mighty Salinas River. Apparently we're
going to get that again tomorrow.

Meanwhile, to the south, Highway 1 is closed from Palo Colorado Road to Ragged Point, a stretch of over 60 miles, due to mud and rock slides. The Ragged Point closure is expected to last several weeks to a couple of months. This will probably make Big Sur denizens happy—no tourists!—so long as they can get out occasionally to stock up on provisions.

As a result of all this rain, I've been sneaking in walks where and when I can. Yesterday when I tried to do my usual multiple circuit of our local Frog Pond wetland, it was taped off, so I took myself on a different walk instead. I wrote a little poem as a result:

The shifting sand is wet, a single set of footprints leads me upward
to the top of the hill, with its two water cisterns
and the view out over the bay,
the northern shore shrouded.
But below me the buildings, the corridors,
gleam, sharp-edged, like a model city,
and I have to restrain myself
from picking the cars up
and sending them in different,
unexpected directions
where the drivers might just
learn something new
about themselves
or this place
we call home.

Today I figured the Frog Pond would still be off limits, but no: no more caution tape. So around and around I went, in the failing light.

I took a few photos. They're dark because it was dark. Or almost so—I did manage not to step in any puddles. The first two are on the Frog Pond circuit; the third is the park at the end of our street. They probably only mean anything to me, but that's okay.

It was so nice to get out.

Tomorrow is predicted to be fair, but then more rain starting Friday morning, through next Wednesday. 

And to finish off, here's John Steinbeck, from East of Eden, on the subject of the Salinas River:

From both sides of the valley little streams slipped out of the hill canyons and fell into the bed of the Salinas River. In the winter of wet years the streams ran full-freshet, and they swelled the river until sometimes it raged and boiled, bank full, and then it was a destroyer. The river tore the edges of the farm lands and washed whole acres down; it toppled barns and houses into itself, to go floating and bobbing away. It trapped cows and pigs and sheep and drowned them in its muddy brown water and carried them to the sea. Then when the late spring came, the river drew in from its edges and the sand banks appeared. And in the summer the river didn’t run at all above ground. Some pools would be left in the deep swirl places under a high bank. The tules and grasses grew back, and willows straightened up with the flood debris in their upper branches. The Salinas was only a part-time river. The summer sun drove it underground. It was not a fine river at all, but it was the only one we had and so we boasted about it—how dangerous it was in a wet winter and how dry it was in a dry summer. You can boast about anything if it’s all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.