I was driving out west through high, dry, cliffs and steep terrain with one or two companions. The sky was a brilliant blue, the car was a little red Toyota.
We cruised along a road that traveled high along the edge of a teetering cliff. Overhangs above gushed water down onto the road in torrents. The further we went, the more water was pouring down from above. The sky was crystal clear. I thought, maybe there was a major rainstorm nearby that caused runoff from way up in the cliffs…a dry-weather water “avalanche” phenomenon particular to this part of the world.
We reached the top of the cliff to discover that it was completely filled at the top with water—a smooth, flat lake blocking our way. We were forced to stop. The water embraced us, climbed up the sides of the car. We became soaking wet; there was no way to reach high ground. We had arrived as high as there was to go. And here was all this water.
I detached from my own perspective and I seemed to drift like a bird above and away from the cliff. I could see two people standing at the car, up to their chests in water. I could see a dilapidated white picket fence that lined the road along the cliff’s dropoff, a passing and antiquated attempt at safety. I could see the wide curve of the cliff’s edge from here. And then I could see, not 100 feet in from the road, our home. In the waking world, it was a house that River and our toddler Council and I shared with his two parents and adult sister.
I was upstairs inside the house, waking up to a bright, brilliant, clear blue sky. I had been trying to get some sleep but was disturbed by the sound of rushing water. The house was filling with it. Parts of the ceiling were coming apart, waterfalls taking their place. The house had old, strange dark crevices and corners and the ceiling seemed lower than usual. Looking out the window I could see that we were perched high on a cliff, a bit too close to the edge. I was exhausted, confused by the brightness of day, and distressed by the rising level of the water, the dropoff below, the relocation of the house. River’s parents were on their way to Arizona. It occurred to me that River’s father had towed the house from Maine to this spot. He seemed to think it made sense for the house to be closer to Arizona while they were on their trip. He’d done it overnight, as we were trying to get some sleep. I awoke having been disturbed by the pouring water that deluged the house.
River woke up and I told him something wasn’t right. Suddenly the house lifted up, shifting itself in a counter-clockwise direction. We had a feeling of weightlessness. We rushed to the ground floor and tried to use our weight to steady the house, wherever it seemed to lift and keel in one direction or another. This slowed the movement, but not before we could see that the house was rapidly drifting towards the cliff’s edge, urged along by the gentle, steady flow of a massive amount of water already moving there in large waves. The house was completely afloat. The ground floor and walls were sopping wet. Finally, the house came to a reluctant stop against the dilapidated white picket fence I had seen from above—the one that ran right along the road’s edge, at the cliff’s dropoff. The fence did not look like it would hold the house for very long. The water eddied around us, licking at the house’s corners and speaking to me of plummeting.
River decided that it would be wise to stoke a fire in the wood stove downstairs—maybe it would dry things out a bit? But because it was so wet down there, he opted to light a fire from upstairs, through an opening in the chimney pipe than ran up from below. His technique was to light newspapers, drop them in the pipe, and blow to ignite the hot embers. This worked, but then a nearby woodpile in the upstairs room caught fire also, and many flammable things around us immediately sprung into flame. River reached for a water spray bottle, which was empty. I panicked. Everywhere I turned, something new had caught fire.
In a nearby upstairs room, Council woke up groggy and disoriented, and stumbled out to us. She saw things on fire and stayed back. I was torn between trying to comfort her and trying to help put out the flames. I was terribly distressed: here we were with a fire problem, lacking water in the midst of a flood, in a house that was not at its natural location, threatening to teeter over the edge of a cliff.
River put out a few of the flames, and worked to contain everything inside the chimney pipe. I began to calm down. My thoughts turned to: why is the house here? This is not a benefit to us. We are stranded in a bad position. The house was not given a firm foundation. We were not informed or consulted about the moving of this house, or where it ended up. In fact we were asleep as it traveled.
All of that may have been true—and it needed to be addressed— but we were also in the midst of a crisis, and we did not have the capacity to put the house back. We could only wait, hoping for change.