Photos By Michael Wild

But We’re Holding On

By Whitney Retzer
Contributing Writer

Weather forecast for tonight: dark. George Carlin was right about a lot of things weather included, and these days it seems pretty important to keep your humor while Old Man Winter and Mother Earth duke it out for control over their often overlooked child Spring.

Often the river swells with the changing of old to new as does our mounting frustration with endless winters and gray springs. Anxiety and panic settles the valley for sandbagging and flooding, but with an ever constant reminder from the first snowfall that inevitably water will come and knock at our doors just as leaves change and mosquitoes harass.

Yes the flooding is awful. Yes it displaces families and friends. Yes it wreaks havoc on our normal day to daze, but let’s keep it in perspective. Bad weather happens everywhere, and shouldn’t we be accustomed to natural destruction by now?

Ancient flooding in the Tigris-Euphrates river valley was so severe it created legends that spread all over the world. Archaeologists believe the tales of this Middle East disaster were brought to the Israelites and inspired the Noah of Genesis who could only take his family and all of animal kind to escape the ravenous waters. The Greeks mythologized that Zeus would destroy the Earth as Pindar recorded in the fifth century BC. A century later Indians would record a similar legend where a fish told Manu or man about a massive flood where he must build a boat to save himself, and these stories move into China and continued to be passed down for centuries. 

In 1931, China suffered 3-4 million casualties as the Yangtze River overflowed, devastating central China’s agricultural population. People drowned in their sleep and the nearby Huai River also flooded killing millions from drowning and diseases. Dikes were washed away and residents reported horrors of cannibalism as their food sources were washed away.

As this New Year came in, both Brazil and Australia were fighting rising waters instead of swimming in champagne. More than 500 people were killed near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as river banks collapsed when a month’s worth of rain fell in just 24 short hours. Across the Pacific in Brisbane, Australia, an estimated 2 million were displaced as 30,000 homes and businesses flooded. These residents in both states Queensland and Victoria will pay a higher tax annually for the rescue and levy re-vamps.

Presently Southern Thailand is recovering from the worst flood in 50 years. Local teacher Melissa Clarke was stranded in her home with little food as grocery stores were closed and shops and convenience stores had run out food. Tourists were stranded, train tracks were flooded and airports were closed down as runways became pools for adventurous children.

Living in the Northland we are a robust people taking on the bitter cold and stormiest days, so it is nothing new to see how weather dominates our lives. The tropics aren’t lush without torrential rain, and the summers aren’t as sweet without the winter. At the end of the day, perhaps it’s comforting to know that everywhere the weather can be shite. Nothing sweet without the bitter, and as the river calms the summer comes.

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