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Sunday, July 8--

9:15 a.m.-

The Northwoods has received 6 inches of rain since late Friday night. The bulk of it fell during the day yesterday--Saturday--when visitors and campers with tents were trying to break camp or make camp, dodging violent spears of lightning and wading through over washing floods. Power was put out and restored three times on Saturday and twice on Sunday. And everybody's exclaiming and relating stories of uncommon trauma. Basements are full of water and the hardware store was sold out of sump pumps and utility pumps--even a dusty old bilge pump, by Saturday noon.

The boat landing has been rearranged. A gully brimming with algae runs down the gravel approach and the dock looks to be a floating away raft ten feet distant from dry land and taking on waves. The NO WAKE sign along the channel is underwater except for the NO reflecting itself topsy-turvy. The water is twenty inches higher and over-running familiar terrain; its personality has changed. Deadhead logs, situated and slumbering peacefully for years have re-floated and are ramming south in the fast current.

Entering the secret channel the boat is buffeted by hard water mixing with the main river. The meadows are submerged, nothing is the same. Navigation landmarks are gone, like a first date all the rules have changed and we're better off to go slow. Like waking one day and going off to work and discovering that overnight a new regime took control and up means down, perimeters are obscured.

A frolic of otters writhing and twisting routines, six of them so beside themselves with fun they ignore us or don't see the boat moving slowly past. The water saddle tree used to be beside shore, now it's not. A greater flood years ago raised the water so high we canoed through the woods, passing beside trees and over grasses waving beneath.

I beached the boat and told EZ "okay," then looked away. Then looked back and saw her intensely writhing her neck into a bony rotting carcass of fish.

Sun shining bright soaring the soul. Clouds cover it briefly and the demeanor takes a dive. An unconscious effect.

Christ! Forty-miles-an-hour a speedboat streaks through a curve out in the main river doing damage to the fragile flood-vulnerable shoreline. Teenaged blonde hair billowing, glinting highlights off breakers rolling breaking apart soft places. But it's a Sunday in early July, after much rain, and everybody--those with speed needs and those with escape on the mind--is racing to reclaim a Saturday lost.