Inundated
You've got to feel for the people in the New England States. New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts have been the unfortunate recipients of too much rain. Throughout the month of May rain fell, and it fell and it fell. A veritable downpour of life-giving, life-affirming moisture, and if you're a hemlock or a duck you'd love it. Unfortunately, people whose homes are in low-lying areas not normally affected by spring run-off or even an inordinate amount of rain, are getting flooded out and they are not happy campers.
Tourism is down, reservations in places normally bustling with tourists are down considerably. Even throughout Bikers' Week in New Hampshire the numbers of bikers on the road is diminished exponentially from normal traffic. Despite which, the inclement weather saw the death this week of three bikers, the result of a collision between a group of motorcyclists and a van. On one of our day-trips we saw an ambulance waiting near a trailhead, a helicopter hovering overhead. On another of our trips we were directed to a detour as State troopers shut down a section of the roadway to enable them to clear up what they informed us was a "really bad accident".
Greenhouses and gardening centres are feeling the pinch of too much rain, as householders who would, under other circumstances, be flocking to their colourful centres are staying away in droves, unwilling to plant sodden gardens. Farmers worry about seed rotting in the ground, about the state of their sprouted plants if there is no relief in the near future for the fields already beyond their capacity to soak up any additional moisture. The fields we saw were awash in saturation.
Despite the rain, the highway medians were ablaze in colour. There was purple and pink phlox, daisies, purple lupines and pink lupine. There was pink fleabane, and there was yellow and also orange hawkweed galore. Dazzling, beautiful to behold. We also saw lilac in bloom, and the true queen of the Waterville Valley and elsewhere; rhododendrons blazing with vibrant colour.
We spent a week in the Waterville Valley, our favourite summertime haunt. No clambering up mountainsides with this kind of weather. Get above the tree line on the vast areas of exposed rock face and you slip and slither, if not on rocks, then on roots criss-crossing trails. Mountain streams normally crossed by skipping from one rock to another are inaccessible as a result of the roiling thrust of the water levels, unusual at this time of year.
But we were lucky, able to get out each and every day, if not for a full day's hike, then at least for an hour or two before the pelting rain increased its tempo and drove us to shelter. As long as we were on trails that were heavily wooded, giving us a respectable leafy canopy overhead we had a modicum of shelter enabling us to hike about in relative comfort. Everything being relative, of course, since the wind, when it picked up, would loose rain upon us from time to time, off the rain-soaked foliage.
But in the rain everything assumes a brighter, darker aspect with a beauty of its own, and we could only congratulate ourselves on our good fortune in being able to get out on the trails, view the rushing waters of the creeks and the waterfalls, the lushness of the hemlock, spruce and pines with the bright green of new growth accentuating the washed colouration of the trails. The rocks are darker, yet brighter, and have an unaccustomed lustre and lure. And underfoot the flowering bunchberry and daintily lovely Ladies' Slippers don't much care about the rain. In fact, the flowering dogwood obviously loves the rain, and we loved seeing it.
Hey, we weren't washed out at all, we loved every minute of it. Just plain lucky, that's all.
posted by Pieface @ Monday, June 12, 2006
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