#Vermontfloods

Putting the World Back Together, Again.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 14 Comments

By Thursday, I’ve lost track of days. A kind man stops by the town office with plates of cookies, still warm from the oven. I’ve been up for hours and hours by then, some working, some staring out the window at the dawn pushing up over the mountain, a spill of pink that widens into gold.

I haven’t been flooded. I know no one who’s injured. Yet, all around, the torn-up world, the folks who are seeking dry shelter, clean clothing, the next meal. The roads are our arteries, and slowly, gravel load by excavator sweep, the world is being put back together.

Thunderstorms and flash floods are in the forecast. Through all this, there’s the subtle underlying sense of how quickly the world turns.

Stores warn of early closings. We’re in this place I recognize immediately, almost giddy, slightly horrified, where people let down their guard, laugh at things that maybe aren’t that funny. Slowly, wrapping order around chaos.

“Water symbolizes the whole of potentiality – the source of all possible existence.”

— Mircea Eliade

Water, Water.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 18 Comments

These days, I’m working in a town clerk’s office, Greensboro, Vermont, population approximately 827. With summer folks, the population swells to three times.

Yesterday, the phone rang all day. We propped the door open, and people wandered in with questions.

Can I get to Craftsbury? Which roads are out? I have a dump truck; want me to haul fill? I’ve lost everything; do you have extra clothes, shoes, blankets?

Selectboard members set up a triage system to patch roads where anyone was stuck. Farm roads were prioritized for milk trucks. All day long, Vermont Public Radio updated us. Montpelier, beloved capital city, is underwater, threatened by a dam where waters rose precipitously.

Late afternoon, the selectboard chair rummaged for leftover potato chips from the July 4th celebration. By then, the sun had emerged. The July day was hot, redolent with blooming roses. I had my own petty worries: my car was low on gas, and I’ve kicked a front brake repair too far down the road, and I’ll need to find a mechanic stat, and who I’ll find isn’t yet clear to me. Later, I’ll call my brother and talk about my parents while weeding my neglected garden. For some time, though, we stood in the parking lot, breathing in sunlight, waiting for a contractor to look at one of the town’s paved roads that’s severed in multiple places, the asphalt broken into multiple chunks. When could he get here with an excavator and put that back together?

A friend drove up and told us about mutual friends in a nearby town. They had been out in the stormy night. Travelers on I-89 had been diverted off the interstate and wound up driving through the backroads of a rural town they didn’t know. By flashlight and headlamp, in a driving rain, water roaring down hillsides, the residents directed the strangers to a safe haven, where they weathered the night.