Looking out my Backdoor: When almost a tsunami

Rainy nights. Sunny days. Moderate temperatures. “I could live in this season forever,” I said to a friend this morning.

If only. Right? Nope, we get to experience all things.

We got to experience a mountain-storm almost-tsunami the other night. A right whopper.

A few days prior, during a lighter storm, I lay in bed thinking about geography. I’m at the foot of mountains. If a phenomenal rainstorm, something much more than the ordinary, were to burst forth, we could be flooded. Water still flows downhill, mostly, right?

Somebody has to imagine these things.

Next day, I told Leo about my night-time meanderings. He laughed at me. “That cannot happen here,” he said.

And then it did. Rain fell so hard it looked like a solid wall. I could neither see my brick wall nor anything closer than the wall nor anything such as the tall trees beyond the wall. A solid wall of water. Impressive, oh, yes, most impressive.

Rain, just as in my imaginings, gushed down the mountainside. By the bottom of the hills, the water had become similar to an ocean wave and like a tsunami, a giant wave, the wall of water rushed across the highway into the fields beyond, carrying trees along with parts of buildings, old tires and all manner of debris.

I didn’t see this with my own eyes. I got the report the next morning. My yard, my home, had no damage. The main thrust of the deluge was about a quarter mile beyond us. I heard sirens off and on all night but had no idea what was happening. The Policia were out all night, clearing pathways so traffic could move through in safety.

This was the storm, the water-wave that Leo assured me could not happen. Trees uplifted. New gullies dug out. Entire hillsides, rearranged. Lowlands under water. Nature being creative.

At the same time, tornados in Montana! We surely seem to be experiencing a lot of “never happen here”.

Once the dread heat dome lifted, we have had rain storms nightly, just like that, no transition, no go gentle into the night. Fortunately, most of most of our rains have been just that, gentle into the night.

Part of me is a huge-eyed child, wanting to ask Mother Nature, “What next?”

The superstitious, I admit it, part of me clamps a hand over my lips and whispers raspy in my ear, “Don’t even think that thought. You do not even want to know what could happen next.”

About this time every afternoon, I go out and scan the sky. I watch the black clouds roll in from seemingly all directions, the mountains, the valleys. I listen to the distant rumbles. Know that if it were darker, I’d see flashes of storm to come.

Back in the house, I put the rain-towels onto the window sills, lay another rug along the door to soak up water that comes inside when the storm lashes windy. Within an hour, it is dark. Some nights, I hear rain hit the roof and watch the storm move in, around, and onward. Other nights, I wake to thunder and flashes electric, rain on the roof and trees, roll over in bed and hope we don’t get another “mountain tsunami”.

May the Fourth be with you.

——

Sondra Ashton grew up in Harlem but spent most of her adult life out of state. She returned to see the Hi-Line with a perspective of delight. After several years back in Harlem, Ashton is seeking new experiences in Etzatlan, Mexico. Once a Montanan, always. Read Ashton’s essays and other work at http://montanatumbleweed.blogspot.com/. Email [email protected].