Strong, brown gods

Snoqualmie River near flood stage
1/14/11

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong, brown god; sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognized as a frontier;
Useful, but untrustworthy as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.

T.S. Eliot
Four Quartets, 1941

Eliot was was talking about the Mississippi River when he wrote that poem. Ancient English majors remember odd things from their hazy past, and sometimes I thought of those lines when I rode strong, brown Sizzle out to look at the flooded Snoqualmie. The river is just across the road from the barn where we boarded years ago. It was a thrilling sight from a car, and more so from horseback.

The Snoqualmie River is 45 miles long and starts in the Alpine Lake Wilderness. It drains most of the west Cascade Mountains and so floods several times a year when warm rain melts the snow pack in spring and fall. The controversial Snoqualmie Flood Reduction Project was completed in 2005 by the Army Corps of Engineers. They widened the river above the town of Snoqualmie to reduce flooding there, but the down river towns of Carnation, Fall City and Duvall still get hammered.

It was raining buckets yesterday, but I drove out I-90 and had lunch with an old friend in Snoqualmie. Then we stopped at Rosebud River Ranch where she still keeps her horse, and where we once passed many happy days. The horses were in their stalls, and there was that cozy feeling like nowhere else of boarders sitting around talking and trying to decide if it was worth the effort to tack up and ride on such a sloppy day. It was great to see friendly faces-- human and equine.