I’m feeling sorry for myself.  Ula suggested I come sit beside Panther Creek today to talk to her.  To ask her what I should do next.  

I’m feeling like a victim of Panther Creek.  Like she hates me.  Like she doesn’t want my business here.  Like she’s singled me out for punishment.  Like she wants me to go away.

“There are no funds for stream bank stabilization,” the guy from the Soil and Water office told me.  “If there was more damage in the town from the storms, there might be some help.  But so far you’re the only one.”

I look at the rush of the water, how the flow of the stream has suddenly changed.  She flows benignly past so many of the little houses in West Fulton.  But with these storms, portions of her bend now, and flow toward our stream bank, smacking up against the sides, tearing away the sod, the bushes, eating chunks of ground when these unexpected July rains get forceful; then snacking with tiny steadfast nibbles when the sun is out. 

“You need to get a load of riprap,” a local architect tells me.  “Dump it down the bank.”

“You need to get a load of riprap, dump it down the bank and move your building,” a contractor tells me.

“You need to build a wall,” an engineer tells me.  

“You need to build a wall,” the guy from Soil and Water confirms.  

Each piece of advice comes with a several thousand dollar price tag.  Soil and Water sends me spec sheets and estimates for repairs.  Riprap would cost $10-15,000. But he advises me that the creek has grown so volatile, it doesn’t stand a good chance of holding.  He urges me to follow the engineer’s advice and build the wall.  He sends those spec sheets.  If we follow them, the estimated starting costs for materials alone is $50,000.  That’s before we hire anyone for the labor.  

“You need to mourn your loss,” the contractor advises.  “Just be sad for a while.  Then make up your mind.”

“You can’t wait,” Soil and Water advises.  “This is a protected trout stream.  You have to come up with a plan, file all the permits and get all the work done before mid-September.”

“Can’t we just plant stuff?”  Eileen, the healer who lives downstairs asks me.  “And what about Mother Mary?”  A bathtub Mary had been left on the property when we purchased it.  I didn’t think my customers would like looking at Christian icons, so I moved her off into the bushes.  It seemed like bad Juju to dispose of her entirely.  I’d forgotten about her.  

I take the idea of plantings back to my advisor at Soil and Water.  He sends me plans for a living wall constructed of stacked and terraced logs, filled with stone and debris, topped with soil, then planted with lots and lots of willow and other riparian species. 

“Trouble is,” he warns, “it’s a lot of work.  You won’t be able to do it fast.  And you run the risk that the roots won’t take hold before the next flood.”

There’s more trouble than that.  The rain has done more than flood the waters.  It has prevented the timber harvest.  I need two full logging truck loads of full-length Hemlocks to build the wall, and so far no one expectsed to get them before the September deadline.

I need to make up my mind fast, because time is running out on getting the necessary permits.

I’m sad, and I’m confused.  And I don’t feel I have the right to be.  The rains were so much worse in Europe.  Lives have been lost, entire communities have been wiped out.  I’ve got a simple erosion problem.  My buildings stand, the cafe is far from the water’s edge. Bob and I just need to make some decisions.

The stacked stone wall will cripple us financially but has an excellent chance of working.  Dumping in riprap will set us back financially, but the solution is quick and we could recover…but the damage could happen all over again.  The living wall has a comparable price tag, and stands the best chance of holding….if…If we can find the materials, if we can work fast enough, if the waters will hold off.  It is a decision that depends on faith and labor.

“You have to ask the water,” Ula insists.

And so, here I am, asking the water. 

But I can’t seem to be alone with her.  

Jenn and Nate come by.  Jenn tells me about where I can apply for free riparian plantings.  Nate explains how to fill out the DEC applications.  Jenn sets up meetings with our forester to find the Hemlock.  Nate helps Bob grab measurements and draw the diagram for our application.  We dig out Mary and move her to the patio overlooking the eroded cliff above the stream.  Her head fell off a while back, but Bob works to wedge it back in place.  We leave her front and center, her arms spread wide and loving toward the water, asking it to spare us further damage.

Corbie comes by.  She sits with me beside the water while I cry in my confusion.  She listens when I tell her what I most want — That I want the banks of the creek to be able to breathe, to heal that I want new roots to take hold.  That I don’t want to fill them with more imported stone. 

And then Fred, another one of our customers with a tree farm nearby stops in at the Honor store while I’m sitting out there later in the afternoon.  He stands beside me and watches the racing water.  

“It’s worse than Irene,” he says, referring to the hurricane that wreaked havoc on our community ten years ago.  I do my best to keep my composure with him.  I don’t want to break down and cry any more.  I’m beginning to fear my tears will cause the water levels to rise.  But I can tell he’s feeling bad.  He wants to make it better.  He offers trees off his land, if a logger can get in.  They aren’t the species I need, but the offer is kind.  Next, his face brightens and he pulls out a backpack from his car.  

“The chanterelles are amazing this year,” he tells me  He’s had great luck foraging.  It’s the one upside to so much rain.  And he insists on leaving me with a bag of them.  I accept this gift, and he drives away.

Later, I make my way back into the cafe kitchen.  I pull the saffron colored mushrooms from the paper sack, take a brush from the cabinet and begin to stroke away the dirt.  And as I do, I realize that, after all this fury of storms, I am holding a gift in my hands from the land, from the water, from my community.  The chanterelles don’t fix the problem. But, perhaps like the Biblical rainbow after the flood, they are a conciliatory offering.   They remind me that, just because I’m facing troubles doesn’t mean I don’t belong here.  I pick up my knife and dice them, then sauté them in butter  as my neighbor Lois taught me.  As I do, deep peace settles over my body as I recognize that the symptoms of climate change in Panther Creek’s angry waters don’t mean that she doesn’t want me here.  It means that Sap Bush Hollow is being asked to do what we’re here to do:  to nourish and restore.  To heal the land, to feed the community.  Sometimes that’s easy work.  Sometimes it’s just really really hard.  But we aren’t alone.  We have neighbors, friends, customers and family members sharing the problem with us.  And the land gives back.  It offers the logs to stabilize the stream banks, it offers the velvety chanterelles. 

The solution to build this living wall will depend on a lot of things.  It will depend on Mother Mary’s holding back the waters, on Mother Nature’s willingness to let us into the forests to harvest, on the patience and tenacity of the excavator who will place the logs, on the resiliency of the plantings, on the labor to get them into the ground, on the mercy of the DEC to give us the time and permits we need to do the right thing, on the prayers of our customers and community, the songs they sing over the water, the little offerings that can be left on the stream bank.  

It’s a complicated solution, woven with prayer, politics, faith, labor, love and intention.  But I think it will work.  I don’t feel sorry for myself any longer.  I feel the peace that comes with resolve.

 

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