I could not believe the size of the trees hurtling past. Despite warnings of serious Western Washington floods, I’d chosen to make my usual midweek trip to our Index-area riverside cabin. I wanted solitude to meet a writing deadline. I also wanted to be on hand to support a close neighbor and friend who has even less river experience than I. Though 19 feet is considered a major flood event on the south fork of the Skykomish (in summer it runs about 4 feet deep, sometimes less), I’d seen that much water. And sure enough, two nights earlier, we’d weathered that first peak.
But now the river was rising toward peak number two. NOAA’s flood data clocked the current level at 21 feet, higher than I’d ever seen it. Waves leaped and exploded, almost at a level with the deck. Uprooted spruce and cedar trees, hundreds of feet long, with root balls bigger than I am tall, would sail into view, then—almost before I could blink—vanish downstream. The house vibrated with a constant, deafening roar.
The swollen torrent was the result of two back-to-back atmospheric rivers. Until now, my concern about climate change has been mostly theoretical. I mourned the melting of distant glaciers, the destruction caused by distant fires. But this water seemed alarmingly close to the bottom of my hanging bird feeder.
I checked my watch. The night before, on a late-night ramble, I’d met a neighbor out walking her dog. A kind and level-headed person who’s lived beside the river for years, she paused to ask if my friend and I planned to leave before the second flood. She warned that the water would almost certainly go over the road and described wading through waist-deep water to try to reach her home in a previous, similar event, so she and her husband planned to stay elsewhere. She told me if we wanted to get out, we should leave by 8am. Properly chastened, I’d walked back to my cabin and packed my car, texting to urge my friend to stay with me in town. She said she’d sleep on it.
Now it was 8:15am. I took one last picture—nothing did the spectacle justice—then poured my coffee in a go-cup, locked the house, and drove down to the community gate, half an hour later than the dog-walker’s recommended departure time. Since the projected peak lay almost eight hours in the future, I figured that was close enough.
Not. When I got to the bend in the road near the gate, I found the low spot in the road already underwater. My friend and a male neighbor from across the road stood in front of the pool, scoping it out. They both wore dripping ponchos. My friend’s hot pink rubber boots glowed in the misty gloom. “You’re a bit late,” she said, wiping the rainwater out of her eyes.
We discussed whether I should try to drive my Subaru through the slow-moving current. The man from across the road waded to the gate while we watched, demonstrating that the water only rose about knee-deep. “You can probably make it, but if you’re going, go now,” he said. “It’s rising fast.”
“Maybe I’ll come with you after all,” said my friend.
I looked at the water and thought of all the warnings I’d heard about driving into standing water. I said, “I’m scared to try it. I think I’d rather stay.”
I got out and we all stood around some more, talking about what to do. The man explained that the threat wasn’t just the rising river. Water was also pouring down off the mountain, filling in all the low areas on the non-river side of the road. We could see that happening, beginning to make islands of his home and my friend’s. Worried, I urged them to come join me at my place. Though it wasn’t much higher, there was a nearby hill where we could park our cars. We could stay in my cabin and monitor the water level, I said. If worse came to worst and the river started to threaten the cabin’s structural integrity, we could retreat uphill to our cars and weather the crisis there. My friend agreed to my plan, and the neighbor promised to join us if he felt in any danger.
I drove back down the road, parked on the hill, and carried my book bag and PJs back into the house. Soon my friend joined me. Where did the day go? It’s weirdly numbing to witness a natural disaster. I kept thinking, I should write, finish my project. Instead, I stared ineffectually out the window, feeling dread punctuated by little flickers of excitement. My friend also tried and failed to get any work done. We were too distracted, watching the river slowly rise. Above its raging waves, chickadees zipped back and forth to feeder, blithely ignoring the maelstrom below. A tiny sodden squirrel huddled near the tree trunk, dark fur silhouetted against white foam.
I was scared to walk out on the deck anymore—if it collapsed, I would be toast—but I discovered I could measure what was happening by walking around the side of the house and watching the water creep up the steps that led to the river. Every hour I put on my raincoat and went to check on that, thinking, so this is how climate change feels when it gets personal. It was terrifying. The water kept advancing. Up over all the concrete steps. Up over the little platform where the stairs turned. Halfway up the white-barked tree.
My friend showed me a Facebook post by Sultan police showing the area near our gate, now deeply underwater. Two cars sat submerged in the current, a Corvette with water up to the windows and an SUV with its top barely showing. The caption: “Remember when we said TURN AROUND DON’T DROWN?” (Later I learned I knew both those cars’ owners, and they were fine. But submersion did their vehicles no favors.)
The day wore on. Well after the projected 4pm peak, the water showed no sign of receding. I estimated we had perhaps six feet before the water swept the makeshift pilings out from under the deck and rushed in under the house. Miraculously, we still had electricity, so we watched a couple of movies, then re-checked NOAA’s flood projections. The river was supposed to stay at the same incredible, terrifying level for a full twelve hours, but not to rise any higher. Still, in case the projections weren’t right, we both spent another sleepless night, my friend tossing and turning on the sofa, me getting up every 90 minutes to peer out the window and make sure we didn’t need to retreat to our cars.
Finally, daylight broke and the water slowly receded. My friend was eager to check on her home, so she pulled on her pink boots, I climbed into my black ones, and we ventured out. We discovered that a log jam had re-directed a creek between our two places. Instead of running off the mountain into the river, the swollen stream now made a perpendicular turn at the bridge and flowed parallel to the road, on the side opposite the main river. Walking down the center of the road, water on both sides, we saw several houses flooded well above floor level. We spotted our community road maintenance man out in a boat near a tiny home that had been swept from its foundation. He was trying to secure it by tying it to a tree.
We never did reach my friend’s cabin. Near her place, the errant stream crossed the road to find its way to the river. We waded a little way into the flow, then concluded it had effectively cut us off. There was nothing to do but head back to my place and wait, so that’s what we did.
Finally, around noon, we were able to make it through the now-shallow water to my friend’s house. The water had come within feet of her foundation. The neighbor across the road also escaped having water come into his house, though it was a near-miss. The NOAA flood map said the river had peaked at just over 24 feet, a hair shy of the earlier record. In the late afternoon, the same godsend of a maintenance man towed the swamped vehicles blocking the gate and moved an enormous, uprooted tree stump that had been deposited in the middle of the road. A little water still ran over the roadway, but not so much that I couldn’t drive out. I said goodbye to my friend and headed back to my husband in Lynnwood.
In the end, my adventure was a non-adventure, especially in the context of the larger catastrophe. Thousands in Skagit Valley did have to sleep in their cars. Thousands lost belongings to water damage. One Nooksack River couple watched as their entire home got picked up and carried away. My friend and I were lucky. Still, it’s still taken me weeks to shake off the residue of the experience. Our lives are so fragile compared with the staggeringly powerful forces of nature. I’m haunted by images of poignant contrasts, bewildering juxtapositions. My friend’s pink boots against a muddy, surly current. The way those chickadees kept zipping around the feeder, even at the height of the flood.