Somewhere Between Glacier and Waterfall

From the driveway, my feet aim east, heavy with memory, toward the cul-de-sac. But, I no longer know the people who’s yards I would have to walk through. Instead, I must pivot and head west, toward the lot of tall grass filling space between rhododendrons which outline the absence of Steffy’s house. 

In 2008, the North Bend Area Residential Flood Mitigation Project launched, offering grant money to purchase or elevate houses. The adults in the neighborhood met weekly to decide what to do. Steffy was the only one who sold. Her house was torn down and over the next ten years, eighteen of the other twenty houses rose up on stilts. 

I walk over grass that grows where the garage once was and memories of white cake flit through my mind, decorated with fresh strawberries and blueberries, sliced and set out on card tables to prepare for fireworks. As I reach the dike, my eyes flick up to the bold mountain and down to the grass, mud, and stones, avoiding slugs and elk droppings while glimpsing the shape and flow of The Snoqualmie River in between. Seeds on the tips of tall grass stretch out, reaching to touch the fabric of my shorts. They cling, hitching a ride on denim rather than hide. It’s August so the brush is as wild as it will get before being annually hacked away once school is firmly in session. Spiked vines bearing the weight of ripened berries claw for sunlight over the feathered tops of reed grasses.

Looking past the brush, down the other slope of the dike, I can spot the top of the post that measures floodwaters. Right now, the blackberry bushes rise to the six foot line as their vines compete for sunlight. But, water during the 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2015 floods rose higher.  

I continue down the path, glancing into yards owned by dogs long gone. One has a tall paneled fence, allowing my childhood picnics and soccer games to remain safely inside even though I know that a brand new set of patio furniture has replaced the old porch swing. I stop to peer across the river at the community center where I worked in high school. Smiling as I look down at the sudden rapids created by the island of pebbles splitting the river’s flow, I’m suddenly sixteen and contemplating ditching my bike in the yard of my trusted neighbor, taking my shoes off, and wading across so I won’t be late for work. But in early June, based on the size of the island, I knew that there would be sections of waist deep currents that could knock me down and even if they didn’t, the thought of pulling socks over wet and silty toes caused me to pedal on. 

This side of the grassy dike is noticeably lower than it’s sister on the county incorporated side so that when the water level rises in winter, it covers the island and spills mostly south to meet with Clough Creek and the rising groundwater, submerging a quiet neighborhood. When it departs, it’s currents ravage homes, taking chairs, wooden stairs, clothing, plastic dump trucks, and televisions back to it’s banks, leaving behind a layer of mud in exchange. 

Looking at the island now, it is so large that it almost meets the other side, constructed of stones whose tops are so dried out they look white when the sun shines just right. Behind the craggly brush, there are muddy pools of warm water, slow and still. Beneath them, rusted crawfish hide under rocks and amongst driftwood. I wonder if any are descendants of the specimens my classmates and I caught to study, which lived for a week in the tubs at the back of our fourth grade classroom before being released in that very mud. 

It’s the same mud which had coated the downstairs walls of my home up to my third grade eye level just one year earlier. Only a few months into that school year my family lost dress-up costumes, toys, stuffed animals, the family computer, and most of the VHS tapes among other things that didn’t matter quite as much to the mind of an eight year old. The interior and exterior of my house, in addition the streets and yards outside it, were left covered in a thin layer of reddish clay as if a desert state had been dropped down on top of my cascade mountain valley homeland. It’s hard to believe that the clear glacial water and stony riverbed hide a bright secret beneath their cool tones. 

Around the bend, the rush of the river quiets as the water deepens. I veer left, downhill via a familiar deer path through the brush, carefully mapped over generations of hooves to avoid spikes and trees. The grass opens to a rocky bank met by water only inches deep which trickles around stones and larger rocks. If you look close enough, these rocks catch fishing lures and lines. Caddisfly larvae cling to their bases, hiding inside camouflaged cases in the chilled water until they are ready to take flight and depart from their aquatic adolescence. 

Later in the year, the shallow trickle of glacial melt will grow, fueled by rainfall, until it’s mass expands over the banks and spills over the dike. By the time it returns to its serene summer state, the rocks will have been displaced, the sand will have shifted, and the river will have slightly changed shape. 

I observe that the body of water has continued to migrate north since I last visited home, widening the stretch of its curve and exposing plenty of walking space around the patch of trees and brambles. As the deer do, I choose to go through instead. Dodging familiar branches and pulling away from thorned leaves sticking like velcro to my hair, I note that, especially late in the summer, this tunnel of greenery is best suited for small humans and slender deer. I wonder how my father made it through every summer evening without a scratch on his face. 

Perhaps he did get a scratch or two and I just didn’t notice, blinded by the excitement of an evening on the riverbed. 

I was equally excited when the river came to my bed. 

Flooding at age eight meant no school, canoeing down roads, taking a sledgehammer to the drywall, tearing up floorboards, and eating peanut butter cookies from The Red Cross. Flooding at age sixteen meant all of that plus driving my precious first car up to high ground through a foot of water, wading knee deep to help elderly neighbors lift up their furniture, and guiding their wheelchairs toward underwater ambulance ramps for evacuation. Flooding at age fifty must have meant rushing to do all of that while worrying for the wellbeing of your children and taking into account the financial damage and amount of work the waters would leave behind. 

Emerging onto a hidden patch of sand, I look out onto my shaded spot on the Snoqualmie River. Here it is sleepier, yet a noticeable soft current flows west. Thick brush surrounds the beach, swallowing any evidence of my old neighbor’s porch swing, stolen by the water during a flood. It isn’t visible but I know it lies there still, crooked and rusting, part of the landscape. Beneath the water on the other bank hide boulders once exposed for children to climb up in search of fresh blackberries and watch water beetles and striders skip around pools of rainwater, before diving back into the cool river. 

I dip my toes into the frigid water, scarcely interrupting it’s westward travel from the Cascades to meet up with the other prongs and plunge down Snoqualmie Falls. The same force flows through the driveway of my childhood home each winter, and every few years invades its rooms to thieve anything it can. What’s left behind is a layer of soggy murk, forcing us to tear down and rebuild pieces of our lives year after year. 

I wonder why my parents never moved our family to another home, guaranteed to have dry flooring year round. But then, I look up at the mountain and down to the water rushing over my toes. This river has taught me how to embrace change and I wouldn’t wish to have spent my childhood summers anywhere other than on the banks of this shaded swimming hole hidden behind the brush.