Of Droughts and Floods

I suppose it's worth mentioning (as this blog has all but supplanted my regular journal) that Utah has received record-breaking snows this winter. I've seen pictures of my siblings and myself next to the deep drifts shoveled to the sides of our childhood driveway back in 1983. I was six then, and, until these past months, that year has always been referenced as the winter to beat all winters. 

But no longer.

The snowpack levels from our current season have long since left 1983's record in the dust. (Dust? I'm not sure that was the proper metaphor.)

(View of our cabin, at the first of April, from the road. You can imagine the fun we had getting ourselves and all of our suitcases, etc. to the door!)

Many a March has found me, tired of the cold, and after months of the weather flirting with spring, grumping a bit about the still hard, and frozen earth (see this post here). But this year, when, in April, I first caught a wholly unexpected glimpse of my tulips and alliums sprouting up from the ground, I simply could not fathom why they were there at all or what they could possibly be thinking popping up in the dead of winter like that! With not so much as a single hint towards spring in all of February and March, it simply hadn't occurred to me that winter wasn't staying until ... summer. 

And that's practically what it did do! 

My college kids were driving to and from Goldie's mission-call opening just last week (more on that later!) in treacherous, blizzardy conditions. And then, quite suddenly, it was 70-plus degrees here on Tuesday! With winter boots still drying on racks, my kids were dawning flip-flops and pulling shorts from the bottom of their drawers!

(Of course today we woke to 30s and snow again. So it appears, at last, that Utah might be settling into its typical, indecisive Spring. Just in time for summer.)

Alas, that's not all there is to be said about that! 

With the weather finally warming, and the heaps and piles of snow finally beginning to melt, we are facing major flooding threats. (We have been, for several years, in a major drought. Abe and Daisy have been joking wryly, that not just anyplace can claim drought and flooding. At the same time!) 

These threats of flooding have had our kids filling sandbags for youth activities and have also been what took us to the cabin over conference weekend to fill and place sandbags in an attempt to stop our cabin from flooding. (Our cabin basement did flood in 2017--when things warmed up too quickly--so the odds are definitely not in our favor.)

Abe, Daisy and Penny weren't there till Saturday night. (Penny couldn't get off work, and Abe and Dais were hosting friends at our house for breakfast and conference, and then changing the oil in their car, etc.) So it ended up being mostly Mike, Goldie and Jesse filling, loading, and dumping (in a pile off the road by our cabin), well over 100 sandbags! (I did my small part before needing to take whining and muddy younger kids back up to the cabin. And I fear my back shall never be the same.)

Between sessions on Sunday (ox in the mire and all that), Abe and Mike dug out this area by the window wells and the rest of us piled sandbags in a large sled and hauled them down for them to stack. At the point pictured below, we still had quite a few left to go. 

You can't even see the sandbags in the snow that we were piling into the sled!

I still can't believe we accomplished all that we did. (And I am sad to admit we still don't know if it will be enough to keep us from flooding.)

Below you can see Mette on the snow outside our deck window.

We spent some time trying to shovel it off to keep our deck from collapsing. But it was so densely packed and heavy that, after a time, we quit and just ... hoped our deck would be ok. 

But! We still enjoyed conference weekend a great deal. And there were a number of prayers sent up all weekend for safety and help that were so clearly answered that it buoyed our spirits and was a good reminder that God really is aware of us in our tiny little corner of the universe.