Oboy. Big flood.

I lost all my alternate routes, and a favorite place.

That’s my driveway into the wash. Or it was. That semi-standing bush used to be several feet from the bank; Torso Boy and I made a u-turn around it on his thrice-a-day walkie. All gone now.

Last night it rained and rained and rained. And sometime after I went to bed the wash flooded, and this time it wrecked a lot of stuff.

The first thing I had to deal with was the local flooding, without even worrying about what the wash did to me. Those are the drainpipes I put in the drainage ditch behind the cabin so that I could bury my sewer pipe in winter. Before dark I actually predicted they wouldn’t stay in the ditch, and they didn’t.

The tiniest piece of damage had the potential to cause the most harm, but I’m in the habit of checking that any time the gully behind the cabin runs…

The greywater pipe from the cabin’s sink plugged with ash mud. No problem cleaning it out, but it’s important to do that.

Dig it out with a shovel and a hoe, unplug it with a stick, then run a sinkful of water through it and we’re done. Then I went overland to survey whatever the wash had done to me, and I found it disorienting.

Given that I can go a week without seeing a soul if I want to without leaving my own front porch you might find it funny that I treasure other really private places. Shady if not always cool places where nobody but me and some animals ever go. I was displeased to find a channel blasted through one such place, but that was just the overture…

A massive chunk of land I enjoyed hanging out in was gone. The wash cut a whole new shortcut channel through the middle of its u-turn.

It was strange and disorienting to have to walk uphill to get to what used to be the main body of the wash.

There was still a trickling little stream going through here but it wasn’t coming from the riverbed, which has now completely bypassed this section. This water was just draining from the clay hills to the north.

Happily the target stands are still there, though damaged and leaning. I need to go back and make sure they’re still tied down in case they get further undermined, though that now seems unlikely.

Once the water punched that new shortcut, the whole course of the river changed abruptly and the river began cutting a new channel through the sand. Ian’s Cave lost a major and potentially important part of its front yard.

My utility road from Ian’s place to the wash is completely gone, and since my driveway entrance is also gone I currently have no way to get the Jeep into the wash. Ironically that throws me on the mercy of the dirt roads, which are very problematic at the moment.

Oh, and we’re also about to lose that old tractor. I have no way to pull it to higher ground.

Parts of my intimate stomping ground remind me of a matte painting from a Star Trek episode: “There was a thriving colony here! What happened?”

Happily, all my anti-flood precautions to prevent damage to the Lair are working extremely well. It’s in fine shape, though it did spring a roof leak around the stovepipe after the first couple of hours of incredibly heavy rain. According to my rain gauge, which I don’t trust, the cabin got six inches of water last night. We’re almost twelve inches for the month. But I really don’t know how accurate that is.