Mudslide

You’d think after over 10 years of doing this together and apart, that words would come easy. You know, standard stuff, from the heart, about the inextricably of the earth and the love/life force. Stuff we try not, the rest of the year, to take for granted but quite often do. Stuff that Earth Exchanges, the concept you envisioned and happily I hear about all over the world, give us pause for a few moments on at least one day to look where we would rather not gaze and feel the unsettling conundrum of many things. But if, like when I went out today, one self-constrains the use of words like “ugly “, “sickening” and “ gut wrenching” that jumped unbid into mind as I came around the bend onto the new tarmac over the new road near Oso, Washington and gave my heart just enough time to remember exactly what it was I’d come there to do before it became too tempting to drive on without stopping, letting the destroyed neighborhood escape through the rearview mirror. Tempting, oh yes it was. The temporary road so uneven and what would it cost if I bumped the rental car into just one of the orange barrels strung together the entire length on both sides of the narrow artery by yellow plastic tape telling me and everyone behind driving reverently, or perhaps just curiously, “No Parking”?

Still, days later, I still lack the words that should have come easy with plenty of time after parking in the driveway of a condemned home and walking back a mile to the huge opening in the forest. But there are images, even ones I wasn’t there to see. Images of mother earth, calving a small hill pushing a blockade of sticky dirt filled with boulders the size of small cars, towering Firs and Spruces and 30 homes down into the broad valley, across the north fork of the Stillaguamish River, cracking and roaring before sloshing to a stop in light rain on top of the only source of rescue, Hwy 530. The only way out. The only way out just three months ago for those still alive wandering or laying dazed or in shock, beneath the grey clouds snagged on the tops of mountains all around.

Now that I’ve been there and sat at the edge of the immense rend in the earth, sat like I would with a friend hurt in an awful, awful train wreck, I can honestly say, there are some places you don’t feel like talking about after leaving. Certainly not out-loud, because you know, deeper than your own bones, you were at the ugliest of graveyards you’ve ever chosen to be. Two people, in this case, are still buried somewhere out there underneath one square mile of grey mud and debris. And though the word ugly is still in my mind and doesn’t sound politically correct in lieu of the 43 deaths, I know ugly is a judgment that doesn’t belong to those hallowed grounds, no more than beauty did a few days before the weight of 48 hours of rain gave caused for that small hill in the back of the picture to give way. There are, though, I know in my heart better words. Words more descriptive than these and more worthy than the gift of some small red and purple flowers I came three thousand miles to plant. As always, Mike

PS The hill that gave way can be seen way in the back on the right side of the dead tree.