The exercise:
Write four lines of prose about: before the flood.
With the cool, wet spring and the recent increase in temperatures causing the snow at higher levels to melt, lake levels have been very high for the last week or so. Everybody's talking about water levels and how much flooding there will be and when it will happen. People in lower lying areas have been sandbagging.
Personally, walking the beaches is a completely different experience now compared to when I started this job. There are stretches I can no longer patrol because the lake has come right up to walls or tree/bush lines. Probably more than fifty percent of the sand has disappeared under water. It's pretty crazy.
We dodged a storm today but the flood watch will be continuing for a while yet.
Mine:
These waters will rise, because Mama Nature say so. Rivers will become lakes, lakes will become oceans, because Mama Nature say so. We will walk until we find the highest ground, to stay dry, to stay safe... because Mama Nature say so?
No man, that just be common sense.
2 comments:
I suppose the high waters make the job easier for a while, but when they recede again and expose the land once more there'll be clean-up needed? Still, cleaning up after nature instead of people ought to be a more pleasant experience! I'm not quite sure what to think of people sandbagging: obviously this is better than being flooded, but wouldn't not building there in the first place be better still? Still, building on flood plains happens everywhere, so I suppose I ought not to be surprised.
Hmm, I like your piece today, for all it's somewhat ominous and submissive at the same time! I think I prefer to challenge Mother Nature myself :-D
Before the flood
They say that in prediluvian times there were six wise sages, all of whom survived the flood but were separated by it. Each sage is supposed to be immortal and still around, so I hired Isabella Bonfontaine to find them for me. She succeeded, which surprised me and my bank balance, and we both learned something really interesting in the process. Bringing the six wise sages together causes the world to flood....
[Prediluvian would be the opposite of antediluvian: before and after the flood respectively.]
Greg - turns out most of the post high water mark clean up was done by other members of the Public Works crew, using machinery for the most part. So... good deal for me, in general :)
Hah, that would not have been the result I would have been expecting should I have been the one to bring the six back together! Nicely crafted little tale, as per usual for you.
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