Early yesterday evening, I heard for the first time in what seems like forever the rumble of distant thunder and raced outside to behold a darkening sky. Could raindrops be far behind? I stripped to my shorts and plopped into my hammock in hopes of getting drenched. Alas, the storm clouds immediately dispersed, thus clearing the way for what our local television weather forecasters refer to as my “weekend outdoor plans.”
Since the persistent heat dome settled over the West, I’ve had no such plans, although I’m somewhat tempted to venture out in order to witness the effects of so-called monsoonal moisture on sparsely populated communities in southeastern Utah. According to television reports, the cloudburst that bypassed the Salt Lake Valley caused a freight train to derail in Lund, and flooded a basement in Enoch.
“Where IS Lund, and where IS Enoch?” You may ask. Probably not one Utahan in a hundred could answer correctly that they are pioneer outposts established at the behest of Brigham Young, who envisioned a desert wasteland “blossoming as a rose.” Unfortunately, rose gardens require water, which is hard to come by in southeastern Utah. Thus, a village like Enoch can only count on one, maybe two, good rainstorms in a summer–including yesterday’s deluge, which flooded the basement of a house perched at the bottom end of a flood plain. So tragic is the flooding of single basement in Enoch that it became the lead story on all four local TV news channels.
Happily, an army of Good Samaritan neighbors immediately converged on the scene in order to remove wet drywall and muck out mud and debris. So just like that it became still another faith-promoting story, even as my own fervid prayers for rainfall continue to go unanswered. Am I not living right, or what? My lawn has died, my vegetable garden has withered; the leaves on my maple tree are looking more and more like kettle-fried potato chips—leaving me with nothing to look forward to save a cloudless, rain-free, sun baked weekend. That is, unless I decide to take that trip down south, and risk being swept away a flash flood.
Flash flood? According to local newscasters, flash floods are a major hazard during the summertime. Of course, one could always mitigate the risk by not venturing into narrow slot canyons whenever there are dark clouds looming on the horizon. Fact is, hardly anyone ever dies in a flash flood in Canyonlands. Far more people are hurt or killed as a result of simple falls at home. Trust me, I know whereof I speak.
