Friedrich Nietzsche is quoted as saying: “Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.”…”That which does not kill me makes me stronger.”  I don’t know if I’m there yet.  After the flood, I’m at: “That which does not kill me shapes me.”  I don’t feel a bit stronger as I circle my deluged yard collecting manufacturer names and model numbers for my FEMA “Possessions” (former) spreadsheet.  My chickens DO feel the ultimate weakness when I pick their remains up after another night of raccoon raids on their decimated coops.  Mother Nature’s power is neither stronger nor weaker after each thrashing she hurls at me and my loved ones, my weak ones, my remaining living ones.  Yes, I have an attitude about all of this.  No, I don’t know if crisis is supposed to determine who your friends are, if God exists, or if, as a survivor, I am stronger.  What I do know is that I, as a life, I am supposed to incorporate what has happened into my life.  Cursing it or trying to forget loss will give IT life.  The purpose this tragedy has is the purpose I give it.

The wondrous trans-formative power of first hand experience with natural disaster can not be properly described by me here in this written piece.  Although this power most certainly can run one over the edge of sanity, I’m going to say that it is a matter of withering luck and a sturdy extended branch of some belief that combine and afford salvation to the foundering soul.  Once one climbs up on a high dry place and peers down on the low flow of consumed mankind, there is the choice to sense and grasp something other than emotional destruction.  How about the cleanliness of it all?  How about, that all of the accumulated dross and false joss of one’s former lives and future dead-ends are being carried out along with things precious and endeared?  I want it one way.  But it’s the other.  Do you feel me?

What would you do with the time you had left if everything you were doing was undone?  Would you walk the flattened fence line and kneel in the sand on the sharp broken wire and wish to be taken away with the others?  Could you bring yourself to search the nearby forest tangle for your possessions carried off over the far – still standing – four foot fence, still sitting and now molding under a defiant arch of hawthorn, still valuable but quite lost.  Should you ignore that reality that is whispering something down there in the now calm creek bed?  Eight feet down the banks a watery siren sings her enchantment.  One hundred yards from your dwelling, her lyrics entreat you – all is well now and forever; lying to you now that the last three floods in the last six weeks were all flukes, demanding that you rebuild, repopulate, repeat the investment, interest, and intensity that was just washed away, wetted through, wantonly destroyed.  Take a walk in the sun but never say “never give up”.

Opportunity knocks seldom and it is not always wise to answer.  When she knocks down the door, there’s your answer.  From under the door that once kept intruders out and from over the din of falling furniture, one can hear through the siren’s soothing song.  Hers ends with “Never give up!” but your counter point composition – maybe for the first a time in your life – is a lyric that begins “Never again!”.  There are plenty of things a critic could dwell on in his former dwelling:  From short insurance payouts, to those who don’t show; from memories and mementos; or that crap that did NOT go.  “Never give up!” and “Never again!” are both powerful slogans.  Both slogans, like distinct blossoms, are beautiful and can be inspiring to those facing defeat.  Either might be appropriate when appropriately applied.  Seems to me you’d stop and see how beautiful they are.

My current circumstance requires that I amalgamate the two above slogans in an appropriate confection to bake my future’s cake.  What should I do with this deluged dwelling?  Build it up again where the bare studs stand? Tear it down forever with a full demolition band? What’s in between Jelly Bean?  Building it again in place leaves me vulnerable to the kind of disaster I’m now trying to recover from. Tearing it down and walking away from that poor fat slab, at the minimum, leaves me with a fat payment to my mortgagee for the portion that I owe on the dwelling which is a portion of the loan on the apportioned real estate appraisal at closing.  Between these twin specters of doom are an arching rainbow of possibility.  None of them perfect.  None of them guaranteed.  All of them with a down slide.

If I rebuild the inside with the same outside, I should do this with the anticipation of another flood.  What I am trying to say here is I need to use materials and techniques that will more easily repaired and less expensive to replace.  For example: painted floors with throw rugs instead of carpeting; drywall with the bottom four feet painted just white (no custom paint) and with a chair rail covering the seam between the upper and lower wall; high shelves for all clothes, books, papers, perishables; used furniture and appliances.

If I do not rebuild, I owe the Capital Farm Credit $12,000 and have no place to live.  You see the formula for what you owe your mortgagee is: OWE = (B/A) * H

Where B=Balance of note, A=Appraised value at loan closing, H=House value at loan closing

If I demolish and put a manufactured home on the property, how high should it be elevated?  How much will it cost?  What will I do with all of that land?

Is there another option?

Yesterday, I arrived at the Sawmyl Synders disaster recover project with new objectives.  Since the mitigation’s critical Phase I – “Stemming the spread of mold” – was accomplished.  I thought I could stem the spread of death in the barnyard by starting Phase I of that cleanup.  Yes, there is beau coup debris to be gathered over a two acre area but the big large huge wood, in the form of tree trunks, wooden beams and dimension-ed lumber seemed to float strategically into the chicken coop area.  These sawed logs incredibly blocked the entrances and exits of three of my four chicken coops, keeping the poultry that was trapped inside trapped in and the birds found outside trapped out.  The work to remove these impediments was made possible by a little John Deere, a big long chain and a struggling old man – me!  No need to drone on about how the wood made its way to the pile.  No point in giving my view of this new world from my eye.  What was seen today by those beady eyes, those same ones that suffered while I tended to my dwelling over the holiday weekend?

Certainly, if the chicken eyes could talk, if their beaks could speak, I would have heard the understated cliche, “It’s about time!”  This is how they do.  The Rhode Island Reds wonder why I can’t seem to keep the gate open on Coop IB for their access to food and water.  Coop IA, my Americanas have taken to laying their green eggs in the other nest boxes because I haven’t properly feathered (hay) their own beds.  On to Coop II, the Sophia Lorens of the barnyard, my dozen Wyandottes (minus nine), with looks forlorn, trudge sadly and silently through the rubble, blaming me, I know, for this thing that defies comprehension by beast or me.  Coop III, here is the dross, twenty-four layers, plus two roosters, reduced to two.  The quiet, gentle, iridescent Australorps nest but lay no more eggs, search but find no food, look to me and find no relief.  Coop IV, the productive and chatty Gold Sex-Links continue to pump out eggs equal to their remaining number.  Having lost their white rooster to a coyote some two months ago, that’s when I noticed that work was their response to tragedy as well as uncertainty.  Some in the coop, some in the run, some in the pasture but none of them is done.  Yes, I have failed them.  Yes, they deserve better.  No, they will not stop doing what they do, laying eggs.  If I were less humane, I would tell the disgruntled huddled in the other coops to follow the example of the Coop IV.  If the fowl in Coop IV were more bitter, they would gang-up and throw me on to the spikes that project from the disarray of landscape timbers in this courtyard of chicken misery, and cluck “Can you feel me?”.  However, inhumanity toward chickens and bird bitterness toward me never surfaces and functionality is restored to a facility that now has no function.

Now that the flood formed stockade in the middle of coop central has been re-located, there is also clear access to the goat shelter (through the once impassable gate) to where no lasting protection for the three goats took place.  Goats hate the rain.  They had open access to higher ground but would rather drown in the deluge than flee up field from it.  Destiny, the Good Friday 2016 doeling, was carried off and she got caught up on to the far barbed wire and succumbed as observed by me and her guardian dog on the night of Thursday, May 26th.  The next day her carcass was missing.  Her mother Desi the doe, rode the wave of destruction over the fence and her whereabouts are still unknown.  What remains is a very tame Billy.  My rambunctious Boer goat buck now sits in the wet hay and mourns the loss of his charge.  Billy finds no comfort or solace or requite in my approach.  The big beast resists response as I scratch between his massive horns and brush the “sipon” from his runny nose and kneel to inspect him and…maybe cry.  He is a social animal without a society.  In charge without a charge.  A male without a mate.  There is no consoling him.  The flood took everything from Billy and I was not there for any of them.

My crew of helpers consisted of one this fine Tuesday – Amy.  She arrived and piled wet clothes into plastic tubs to take to the laundromat.  Two hours later, Vee and I had clean, dry, folded formerly flooded fabric – shirts, pants and even my treasured marathon quilt.  Amy is gracious and humble and completely resolved to help us recover.  She is working on her English language skills and I am confusing her with my lack of clear skill in speaking to her in that same language.  Our limited conversations are already storied.

One last observation.  At 1 p.m., my son Patrick brought us lunch.  He brought his three year old son, Dean.  Dean asked if he could ride the tractor and feed the chickens.  He noticed the house looked different.  My grandson decided to inspect further.  He walked the entire house deliberately, his tiny legs sure as his curious head twists and turns from one side to the other, from one room to the next, from the back laundry room and kitchen to the far bedrooms – in silence.  He returns and faces me, ready to opine.  First he says there are too many fans.  There are five, he says, but there should be only four.  I am amused and impressed and ask him how old he is.  He says one and holds up two fingers.  Dean is three.  Finally, after doing a visual panorama of the furniture-less  carpet-less dwelling with four feet of drywall removed (allowing a clear view of every room without him taking a step) Dean declares: “I don’t like your house”.

They lie soaking in the front lawn, backyard, strewn about the pasture.  Once alive and vibrant with hope and full of fanciful mystery, these formerly living must now be let go.  Commemorated.  Buried.  It would be easier if I could take responsibility for their demise.  Punish myself and be done with it.  But I am only responsible for their creation, nurturing and neglect.  I put each of them in harms ways by wanting them to accompany me through life.  Having a fascinating companion makes your time fly.  Being with someone who is always wanting to do things that scare the hell out of you makes the emotions soar.  Observing and absorbing stirring emotions so intense and so raw and so genuine reminds one that they are – sometimes reluctantly – alive.  Now I smell death in my creations.

Loss hollows me out – have no doubt.  My past lives swell before me.  But having something to lose at least puts me ahead of having nothing at all.  The false starts and missteps and naivete that infected the young me diminished, slowly, as hope became more strategic and sentiments cool with age.  The wise who watch over me never wanted to be discovered, but, also, never want to be abandoned.  For it is the lack of knowing everything that keeps me seeking to want some select things.  It is my believing without seeing that ultimately leads me to a place where every representation of those things I thought were important lie about me and wait to be disposed of.  Now I see death in my past lives.

Pursuing something to find a thing that matters is a way of escaping yourself.  It might start out as a person, next it may be an achievement, followed by occupation, family, and or isolation.  These pursuits only understand win lose in their immediacy but they are steps up and towards oneself.  The events of life hold value diametrically.  Winnings are quickly dissipated and leave little value for life.  Losing often has no immediate reward but pays a life long dividend.  The wise who I spoke of earlier are there to help but prefer to remain anonymous.   Now I hear wisdom in my silent past.

Once you know it all, you begin on the path to learning nothing.  When you conclude that those who trust you are suckers, you begin on the path to losing their trust.  If you believe everyone is out to get you, you begin on the path to getting nothing from anyone.  Each of us will eventually take the path of least resistance.  Unless we have the knowledge to know the pain of alternate paths, we will repeat our mistaken travels.  The Wise could give us this wisdom at birth but they choose for us to do it the hard way.  They could tell us that every ascent has a descent in its future and every descent has an ascent in its future – but they don’t.  They could tell us that every harvest – good or bad – begins in the dead season of winter when no activity is taking place.  The thoughts in this winter of events manifest in the spring planting of seeds of endeavor.  Those nurtured or neglected planting soon must endure the scintillating heat of summer with deluge and disease.  The surviving crop of this season of man matures and goes to harvest and then to the scales.  One must acknowledge that the cycle begins again with the winter.  Now I feel the dead season in my beckoning future.

I feel nothing.  However, when someone talks to me about the loss or shows care in words and more so in deeds, I lose my composure.  Yes, it is a terrible loss.  No, it’s not the end of the world.  Maybe it’s time to make a change in direction.  I thought Sawmyl Synders Farm would be my life’s work.  I thought I could die in the field with my expanding animal charge and a lovable livestock guardian dog named Syndee.  But now…not.  I believed it would never be possible to flood like this and so I built and expanded and dreamed without limitation.  Now that I know, I will not build anymore, nor will I expand this reality.  And as for dreams…

Maybe this was as good as it could get.  Thirty dozen eggs a week for sale.  Three goats that turned into a hobby and not a business.  One Thanksgiving and one Christmas with my own homegrown turkeys for a meal.  A large investment on a small property with, now, no future.  Now, no hope.  Now, no next.  At the age of 67 I am not prepared to put more money and years into something that may be carried away on fast brown water.  With good health, bad luck and a mentality that defies logic at every opportunity, I wish to do something but something that can be done by me.  Something that will last me the rest of my conscious life.  Some day, I’ll find a way, to make my natural tendencies pay;}  Sublimation?

But what of the others?  Tita Vee?  Friends and Neighbors?  Saint Isidore?  JC/PCS/Ray/Fran?  They will be there and remain in my life but in another wonderful relationship.  Of course, for Vee, it will surely be enhanced.  All my children, of course, they are the world, along with their children.  What do you think Mother Nature is thinking about me now?

Mother Nature does her thing and you don’t want to get in her way.  Her regard for mankind appears to be as apathetic as my apparent regard for this loss.  The fateful thing about her, Mother Nature, is that she only speaks to you in the present.  As for the past, there is no discussing it with her, and as for the future, she expects that you remember the past.  But she will talk to you now.  She will tell you that every vulnerability will eventually be tested and every measure of her is merely a guess at her strength and predictability.  Only when you sit in your pit of ashes – stripped of everything – can you imagine what homage she requires.  But there is no payment, other than respect, that she will accept.  The ancient idea of making sacrifices to Nature to persuade her to spare you, now makes so much sense to a modern man scarred by her hand.  That one must bring the firstlings of his flock and their fat portions and give it to Mother Nature out of regard, this I would do – if there were any left.

Whatever path I take, it must be one which expresses regard for Mother Nature for the rest of my life.  That path may be in a mode that is far removed from contact with her but a mode that brings others closer to her.  She has tried to teach us, all of us, that every event will eventually take the path of least resistance.  I must find that path for myself for my remaining years.  Every ascent has a descent in its future, and this flood is the descent for me now.  I must ascend on a path I can better control.  A path with an ascent that I am more naturally adapted.  I must evaluate my life and its seasons and identify where I am.  In what season of my life am I now?  In what season of my retirement am I now?  In what season of my understanding am I now?