The cat that 5 weeks ago was a blessing to our shovel weary souls has since become an albatros dangling from our necks. This place is beginning to look a lot like New Orleans, we have our own Ninth Ward and a French Quarter at the other end of town, only here the dikes are working in reverse: they are holding the floodwaters in. After we had dug most of this place out what seems so long ago, our expeditor started sending up boxes and bags from our warehouse that were marked for camp. One of the first that arrived was a bag with 4 lifejackets. At the time I thought it was a bit of a joke, now I am worried that we don’t have enough.
What was once a tidy white paradise (I wasn’t thinking straight not long after the shoveling ended) has since turned into something resembling a redneck ghetto. Half garbage dump from what was left of our corebox walkway of last year and the other half swampland dotted with pallet mangroves. There is very little in the way of dry ground within the confines of camp but venture to the other side of our dikes and the snow is melting rapidly, the runoff quickly absorbed by the thawing tundra. Meanwhile back in the barrio our water meets the snowbank and creates a nice ice interface further retaining the melt. This place has surely turned into Bizarro World; with our moat on the wrong side of the fortress walls the only thing that could possibly help our plight is if it never got above zero. Good luck with that given that June is but 4 days away.
Oh hey look!
… Its supposed to snow on Monday night and Tuesday...Perhaps?
Perhaps not.
If the rising tide wasn’t bad enough the rubber boots I bought before embarking on this adventure suffered a cracked shank and now let the floodwaters in. All of that work shoveling all of that snow put a strain on them that wouldn’t be realized until it began to melt away. Now by noon when the overnight ice begins to melt I begin to tread lightly because I know that even the slightest emersion means wet feet which right now is a real pisser when I am trying to shake the Sedna influenza pandemic.
One of the biggest disappoinments about the thaw is the loss of my mini-bar, but alas perhaps there is something positive that can come of all of this courtesy of the half-witted, inbred, trailer-trash, indigenous peoples of the Deep South. Eventually the lake is going melt, and the fish will be hungry. All we need is a boat, or maybe a hurricane and a little ingenuity will do?
No comments:
Post a Comment