Wild waters, wild animals

There has been a run on de-humidifiers at Home Depot.  The pile of old newspapers is a damp pulpy mass--just from the water absorbed from the air.

Streams and tributaries everywhere have over-flowed.  Basements are flooded, roads are closed--the rising waters did not cease after the hurricane--and everyone is in disaster mode.


My exulting over the creation of great swaths of paths between here and Hyper Humus--providing me with the perfect terrain for long, uninterrupted wilderness walks came to an abrupt end when route after route got swallowed by the rising waters.

Still, if the water isn't seeping into your house, flooding your basement and soaking your rugs, there is something thrilling about land covered with water--trees rising in the middle of lakes, startling juxtapositions of vegetation and water.  Surprises everywhere.  Triumph of nature over all paltry human efforts.
Here's some of the flooding that's blocking all my usual walks and providing general excitement.

5 turkeys w. rusty bar-b-que

All this new water and fallen trees must have re-routed many of the local animals (it might also be the opening of some hunting seasons, though I remain blissfully ignorant of those complicated schedules).  A group of six deer regularly visit the fallen apple tree (they might have stripped it of all apples by now).  Five very large turkeys are frequent visitors.  They don't look big in this picture, but large they are.  And most exciting of all--in the past two days, I have had two!! sightings of a mother bear and her two cubs.

They are barely visible in this picture--but if you try hard--and do some enlarging--you should be able to make out two of them around the second fallen tree.  I had seen the mother (or one of her friends) the very first week I was here--at the end of June--but this is the first time I've seen the whole family!