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  • From: DSanner106 AT aol.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Primitive Technology Living
  • Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2008 11:59:00 EDT

Hey Bev,
I see you have your first hard frost/freeze prediction for tonight,
seems a little early this year.
Hope you are all ready for it.

Drew


In a message dated 10/19/2008 12:06:30 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
erthnsky AT bellsouth.net writes:



eureka AT hctc.net wrote:
> Bev, I did not know, and I'm SO sorry to hear that flood
> touched your life. That must be painful to think about, my
> heart goes out to you.

Thanks, I'm fine. I just wish I had been able to meet her before she
died. At any rate, I see people on TV drive through floodwaters all the
time, and it just seems like such a dumb thing to do. Russian Roulette.


>
> I used to be a whitewater instructor so I have a very
> healthy respect for the power of water. I approach it with
> great caution. I've seen the damage it can do.

Wish you lived closer. We've been trying to take a ropes course for the
canoe, not that we would be intentionally in whitewater, but you never
know when a good thunderstorm will turn Class 1 into Class 3 or 4. One
of the scariest moments in my life was on a river. I was about 15,
trout fishing on the Chattahoochee in about ankle deep water. The river
was wide and I was on some rocks in the middle. I heard a horn, the
warning horn from the dam when they release the water. Before my
stepfather and I could get to the bank, the water had come up several
feet and we were swept a long ways downstream. At the spot where we
would grab a tree, the bank was steep. Luckily, there were some people
there who helped us out, or I think we could have drowned. Fighting the
water like that tires you out very quickly, especially when you panic.
Add all that with my broken arm from the river trip a few years ago
and well, it is a recipe for caution around moving water.

In fact,
> that three slug flood took out the cabin I had been
> renting three weeks before moving into my house.

Close call. You are lucky.

Where I
> live there are some crossings that always have four to six
> inches of water flowing across--including mine in wetter
> years--so we have to keep aware of the weather at all
> times (we use wunderground.com) and always check the
> height of the water on the marked poles before crossing.

I use wunderground, too. It's the most accurate for my area. I like
the poles idea...it's not something I've seen here.

> It can be raining on the plateau but not here and still
> flood. Unfortunately the only USGS gauge is downstream but
> it does give us some indication. Our local DOT is pretty
> good about putting barriers across the roads too and we
> respect them. Fortunately our canyon is not as steep as
> those in Colorado and we could evacuate by foot through
> cut fence to higher ground if need be. Even as bad as they
> were, no lives were lost.

That's good news. Do you check the gauge online? I do that with out
local river, just to get an idea of the flow before we canoe.
>
> One of the ecological problems here is that when new
> people move in, they clear everything, including the
> native grasses, leaving only the ioak trees between their
> house and the river (there's this obsession about having
> to see everything, take the mystery out of it), so when it
> rains there's nothing to slow the water down. Gravel
> (since we don't have much in the way of soil) from erosion
> is starting to fill the swimming holes and the river is
> getting flatter and wider. No doubt FEMA will redraw the
> lines in the future.


That is a problem here, too. Our local river group, NERA, of which DH
and I are members, monitors the water quality. When they clear the
land, runoff creates a silt laden stream. The creeks become muddy, then
the rivers. When there is no clarity, fish suffer, and of course, there
is no way to tell depth.

B
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