You may or may not know that I live in the town of Snohomish in Snohomish County, Washington State. A tiny little town nearby has been in the news - Oso, Washington. There's a beautiful drive we take in the summer which winds through the Stillaguamish river valley up to the mountains - Diablo Dam and Washington Pass are favorite places to stop. Oso is in the foothills and is a "don't blink or you'll miss it" little town on a bend in the river. This is where the nightmare mudslide was.
When it rains for 40 days straight we try to remember the rain is a gift. It's why we have towering trees and rushing rivers. Salmon and eagles and great white snow geese. It's why we mow the lawn 3x a week and have cabbages the size of basketballs. It's why one little pumpkin seed pushed into the ground by a five year old chubby little hand will six months later produce 10 pumpkins on one vine. The rain. It is a gift.
So this is hard.
Thank you for your thoughts and prayers and well wishing for this corner of the world. I and my family are miles from the disaster and are quite safe, but the mud has touched us all in some way.
7 comments:
Beautiful commentary. My heart has been heavy over the situation in Oso, too. (I'm down in Renton, and I get teary-eyed every morning when I read The Seattle Times articles about the slide.)
oh so true...it is so heartbreaking...in a blink of an eye, everything changed...
Was shocked to hear the news of this on the radio when going to school the other day. Very sad and scary how everything can change in a moment. We saw mud slides and land slides and river runs in Nepal. The forces of nature are incredible. Glad you are well. Best wishes, Tammy
The clear cutting did not help! The rain, too much of a good thing is still too much. The earth will shift on it's own, especially rivers, but thoughtless cutting of trees had a hand in this particular shift, and it is tragic. I live in Bellingham, this is the wettest March ever, so they say. Climatologists say "get used to it" The planet is in the throws of major change.
So sad and scary. Nature is indeed as powerful as it is beautiful.
Lovely painted rocks though.
So sad, but love your bear. xox
It's just so shocking (although I understand it shouldn't be shocking given warnings about that place for decades). I do hope the community recovers -- and am comforted that they're in their neighbors' thoughts.
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