Lord Willing & the Creek Don't Rise!

Phew! I don't know that I ever thought that phrase would become so real to me. However, since moving onto our land, there are several times when "the creek don't rise" portion has been very real.

I think it was only 3 times last winter that we could not get across the creek. I remember one time Dave could not get home, so he went back to work and spent the night there. Another time I tried, unsuccessfully, to throw his mudders across the creek to him. The first one went downstream and I held onto the second one!

What we did get across the creek was a stick with a rope attached. Dave tied it on one side and I tied it on the other. Then he pulled himself across the creek, getting soaked in icy water in the process. Wet shoes and socks! Wet pants! In fact, the mudders would not have kept him dry...they would have simply allowed him to take off his shoes and keep them dry by carrying them. The force of the water went way up his legs.

At some point, Dave decided to look for a creekside tree to fell so that it would lay across the creek. Admittedly, it is not the best way to get over the creek, but we figured, "hey...in a pinch!" So, off he went with a friend to find one. After felling it, they tied a rope above it so that we had something to hold onto while we crossed. It is not a very wide tree, but it is plenty strong enough. We tried crossing on it. One has to be VERY careful using it to cross, even with the rope.

If the creek is high enough to need to use it, there is still all the water flowing into our meadow from the neighbor's property and the hillside gully to get across, too. It is a bit tricky, but we figured we could do if we really had to. It beats trying to walk through swiftly flowing water that might contain a branch that could slam into us.

This winter, we have been pretty blessed. In spite of the rains, we have been able to get across the creek...until last week. My son and I are going to a home school co-op one day a week. Last week it was raining hard so Dave parked across the creek, just in case it got too high to drive across.

We have cement blocks and pile of rocks to use to walk across onwhen the creek. When it rains really hard, though, the blocks and rocks get buried enough to make it so that we cannot walk across, even when we can still drive across. Well, last week there was no way we could walk it and it is good thing he parked on the other side because he could not have driven it, either.

So, we slogged on over to the new neighbors property. Someone bought the property next to ours and is in the process of putting in a double wide. Part of that package was to build a crossing over the creek. So, we carefully picked our way across the wet meadow over to their property to walk across to the road and back over to the van. That was not too bad, other than the water running into our meadow.

This week, however, it was really bad again. We had our mudders on this time, though. We were prepared! And it is a good thing. We noticed that the water in our meadow was more than usual. As we approached the neighbors property we could see why. His creek crossing was dammed up. You could see the tree limbs sticking up above the road. The water was level with the driveway on one side and barely coming through on the other.

Usually, creek crossings are made a little bit lower than the driveway height so that any overflow just flows evenly across. This was built even with the driveway. So, instead of flowing smoothly over, it was being diverted onto his property at one end of the crossing and flooding it. As it went down the other side it was eating away at the crossing and causing a whole torrent of water to flow along the creek and over to the meadow with some of it going back into the creek on the other side of the crossing. If we had not had our mudders on, we would not have made it through the flooding water to get to the crossing and the road.

So, two weeks in a row, we had our exercise before we even got into the van! But we made it! Thankfully, in spite of some continued heavy rains later in the day, the water was able to do down at our driveway which allowed us to actually drive across. Typically, when the water runs that heavily through the creek, we have some undercutting on one side of our crossing and there is some repair that needs to be done before Dave can drive across. But, thank Yahweh, we were able to drive right across!

We truly believe this is an answer to prayer. We had faithful friends praying with us that we would be able to get home. Not only did we get home...we were able to drive right across! Woohoo!