These are Dangerous Times

I once said I would never live in a place that did not have a river running through it.

I think I still hold to that.

The Qu’Appelle River is swollen; if we did not have the dikes on either side of the river (strong, broad-shouldered women in comfortable shoes, of course), our houses would be under water. There is so much water flowing through the river that the volunteer fire department has stationed five rail cars on the train trestle at the west end of town to weigh it down. Huge driftwood logs, picnic tables (and, I suspect, our babysitter’s son’s boss’ truck) have all washed up against the train bridge to form a fairly impressive dam, which has, of course, helped the river to grow past her banks upriver.

Last night, I took a drive west of our town.

There were people parasurfing in pastures and fallow fields. What is usually a lovely expanse of alfalfa and verdant grazing land is all under water, and a group of four or five people had their parachutes and their surfboards and their wetsuits and they were riding up and down the valley on the fins of their boards, tugged along by the wind. It was such a surreal thing to see, and I was so jealous that I had no parasurfing equipment…with the sun glinting off the meltwater, it felt like I’d just inherited some lakefront property.

The Captain and I took a stroll along the riverbank after dinner, and learned how to read the surface of a river (as best as one can). It was good to have something to compare it to.

This spring flood makes me want a kayak more than ever.