Flash flood!

One of the best things about living in the woods is the opportunity to experience the subtle but continual changes of nature.  Some things, however, aren't very subtle.

I'm lying awake at 2:30 am listening to the rain fall on our metal roof.  I'm anxious because in a couple of hours I'm getting up to drive to Grand Portage to catch a boat to Isle Royale to guide a backpacking trip.  What started as a calm rain shower soon becomes a down pour.  The down pour continues through the remainder of the night and into the morning when at 5:30 I drive down the road.  At this point the ditches are completely full.

Driving up Highway 61 to Grand Portage that morning was like winter driving in July.  As the truck was hydroplaning at every low point in the road I couldn't help but think about the homestead.  I couldn't go back.  I was committed to catching that boat and guiding a five day backpacking trip.  Rolling over 3-5 foot waves later that morning with lightening shattering the distant Canadian sky I knew that the situation at home wasn't good.  However, on the remote island and without any form of communication for five days I had to trust that Amy had the situation under control.

Needless to say the rain poured down relentlessly until mid morning.  Over four inches of rain fell.  Our ditch was scoured down to bedrock.  All of the rock in it was transported by the torrent down to the culvert.  The pipe soon clogged up and with no place to go the water rushed over the driveway and road. Within moments the road was washed away!

Amy headed back home after dropping me off to catch the boat.  Driving up the washed-out County road leading home she knew right away that things were bad.  Debris had covered the base of the driveway.  The culvert was no where to be found.  She was able to locate the outlet of the culvert, paced the line back up to where she thought the inlet would be and started to dig.  As long as the culvert was buried water would continue to run over the road and exacerbate the damage!  After a couple of hours of digging she finally found the inlet and was able to get the runoff to drain into the culvert.  She spent the next two days digging and filling in the freshly incised channels in an attempt to level out the road surface to make it passable.

Five days later I got home to find a place much different than I had left.  We have spent the last few days digging and and "patching" the base of the road of.  Right now we are just happy that we can get to our new home and thinking of ways to deal with the next time it decides to dump 4 inches of rain on us!  Once again we've found that it all comes down to water and how it interacts with the landscape; particularly at it's most violent moments...