We walked to the end of the driveway, and the road was washed out entirely. You could fit a semi truck in the road at our feet, no kidding. There were sections that seemed to have weathered the rain decently, and then there were others where you wouldn't have even known there was a road there. We walked down the road and cut over the switchback to get to the main road. We knew from the night before that the bottom of the road had washed out, so we were taking the short cut.
Hitting the pavement and looking out was flooring. There was no traffic, it was quiet aside from the gentle roar of the still swollen river, but, half the road was gone, literally, no longer there. The edge was inches from the yellow line, in a couple spots past it. The road that I had driven on my entire life was gone. I was terrified at what that might mean for our home.
We walked around the bend in the road, and you could see my neighbor D's house. It was destroyed. If you put a piece of square paper on the desk in front of you, call that his house. Now twist it slightly so the top is now facing about 10 o'clock. Now move it over about 2 inches. Large scale that's what happened. Now also, imagine just a roof, it's tilted forward and the eves are almost touching the ground. Yes, and now put a huge pine tree just off to the side of it, but in a position you can tell it did the bulk of the damage.
That was my neighbors house. The house that I used to just pop by after a swim in the river when I was a child. The house that we went to for dinners and fun. The house that I stayed at while I watched D's dogs while he went on his trips. It was gone. No, I take that back, it was there, but destroyed, and so for me, it was gone.
About that time, I had taken in about as much of D's house as I could without totally panicking. I'm not saying I was not panicked, I was, but I hadn't lost it yet. We came up on our driveway, and I could see the peak of our roof. I knew my house stood, but what of it.
Walking down the driveway you could see the rest of the house. Sitting there, happy, visually untouched.
My house, no my home, had weathered the storm. I can't remember the emotion I felt at that time, I know it was a mixture, mostly relief, but it was all a blur.
We got inside and the interior had made it. No water damage in the livable portion of our house, nothing even moved. We opened it up, gave the dogs some breakfast (we forgot to feed them dinner the night before), and stepped outside.
Looking around the yard from my front top step brought tears to my eyes. I knew we were lucky, I knew that we fared better then some, but my yard was, well, not mine. It was an alien back yard. The front part, you could see where the water was, the debris line came to about 10 feet from the corner of our kitchen, to close for comfort, but again, we had made it. It was amazing.
Our back yard. It was there, unlike other properties our yard didn't erode away. What it did do though, is Mother Nature had decided to plop 3 feet of sand and silt on top of my beautiful garden. You could see the very tip of my tomato plants popping through, the back end of a zucchini. A leaf of eggplant. You could see the wire for the peas, and the stakes, but nothing else. It was all gone. Further back, the building we referred to as the yeti house, it was buried in sand, tilted forward more then it had been. Walking around the back it was missing the whole back wall, and the two corner support structures.
Deep breathing. We walked back up to Mom. She noticed no dogs, so she knew we had a house, but our next project was trying to get the cars down the hill. My hand was rapidly swelling and hurting, and I knew that something was up with it, but was trying not to panic even more. We tried to make calls out, but the phones were down.
J, the person who we stayed with, had heavy equipment. He had managed to get a somewhat travel-able road down to the main road in only a couple short hours. We loaded up our cars, and attempted a drive down the hill as soon as the local FD guys had left (we didn't want them to see us trying to drive down, they had come up on 4-wheelers). Slowly, we made it, and about 15 minutes later we had our cars in our driveway and were unloading. We went back and forth about what to do with my hand, and eventually we opted to try to get me help, and so we got into our car and made our way towards the main town.
I will write more later, this was a lot, and my hands hurt, and I'm tired, but I promise the next 'installment' will be soon.
2 comments:
again...wow. i just can't even imagine.
i knwo this is way off topic, but you really write well iiri-- i love reading your stuff. altho i hate that irene was so brutal to you. :( you & jeff are pretty amazing to keep things together after all that you went through in the past month.
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