I don’t know if you noticed, but last week it rained.
Torrents of rain fell upon torrents of rain, and more rain followed that.
The sky’s blue got absorbed by a soggy, woolen, grey blanket, and the storms that followed seemed relentless.
Late last Friday afternoon, as the rain pounded, the road leading to my home was swiftly swallowed up by the Sunflower River. My tiny neighborhood is now surrounded by water, and it will be until the water decides something different.
Our houses are softly nestled near a crook in the river’s sleeping body and she is usually very easy to get along with, until the cold winter rains come and wake her.
Flopping onto her back, her belly rises and she becomes grumpy.
I can’t fault her for that, she has suffered a lot of abuse over the last 120 years or so, mostly by men who have treated her trashily.
Now, she is busy at work, doing her job, pushing water along rapidly, not able to hold the vast amount of it. It overflows from her banks and my family, my neighbors, and I are forced to boat in and out in order to reach our dwellings.
This is the third year in a row we have been flooded during the months of February or March. This year we get both months, as one spills into the next.
It makes me feel very ancient, knowing that no matter how much we’ve advanced as a culture there are some things that will still be shared with the generations that came before us. The theme of man verses nature is, after all, “universal” for a reason.
It does make me wonder why anyone in their right mind ever settled in a region like the Delta. Were they insane?
I’ve settled here too though, so maybe we are all crazy.
Thinking about it makes me tired.
I’m tired of the muddy boots, and the muddy floors, and the muddy bow of a Jon boat docked just a few steps beyond my back patio that I am forced to climb into to go to work, or to church, or to the grocery store.
I feel as if everything I own is wallowing in mud.
Or perhaps, I’m just wallowing in my own self-pity.
That’s okay to do sometimes, isn’t it? Perhaps not?
I guess that focusing on self-pity and wallowing in that which is negative leads to complaining. That is what I’m doing now, and it is not okay at all.
We are a society that expects immediate comfort and gratification. I don’t know that it has always been this way. It certainly wasn’t for the older relatives I grew up around, the ones who made up some of the first generations of people to live in the Delta.
The only thing I can remember my grandmother saying about the 1927 flood was that she could never forget the moaning sounds cows made as they drowned.
Hardship was a way of life.
If you have never read the book Trials of the Earth you need to, especially if you were born here. If you weren’t born here but moved here, a copy of the book should have been handed to you upon entering this foreign world. That, and a passport, and a written description of exactly all the things you are not going to be expecting in this oppressive flatland full of mosquitos and contradictions.
But, I digress.
Trials of the Earth is a first hand account of Mary Mann Hamilton, one of the earliest women settlers in the Delta. She is believed by some to be the very first female to cross my old friend the Sunflower River, the water in it then ran deep and clear across its silty bottom.
Mary’s stories are nothing short of astonishing. She describes one terrible encounter with a flood of her own. She was all alone with two tiny children. As the waters came up, she stacked furniture atop a tree stump to stay above its rising levels. She watched a black bear as it swam closely by her and prayed that she wouldn’t die before her children. She didn’t want them to be left alone and afraid.
I will let you read for yourself how this and her other adventures ended.
Life is filled with adventures isn’t it?
Good or bad, they are still adventures.
Trials shed light on the good.
Our attitudes shed light on both.
I think of this as I sit outside my house just before dark. The birds are settling and everything is quiet. I can hear the rustling of the river across my backyard. I look out at the expanse of it, as leafless trees cast their reflections on its milky brown surface before transforming into shadows.
I think that if I stare long enough surely I will see ghosts. Not the kinds of ghosts that haunt and scare, but the kind that simply just show up to remind us that there is more to life than our circumstances.
Then I feel them in the wind, invisible spirits fluttering like gossamer against my skin. The profoundness of their presence reaches up over time and space and links me to this area of the earth.
Wrapping my arms around myself I get a sudden rush of pride, realizing that I am forever one of the crazies who sees this place for what it is. It is magical at times, brimming with history and long conversations, and other times it is filled with pain. Regardless, I am a part of this land, along with anyone else who still has the dust of backroads resting somewhere deep in their lungs, and can hear the rush of muddy waters when they close their eyes.
We are all just strange memories hovering above the fertile soil of this horribly, wonderful place we call home.
And the river takes note of our names.
“My country is the Mississippi Delta, the river country.” William Alexander Percy
