The Harpeth River

This quiet stretch of river glimpsed through the trees is the Harpeth, and I have lived in sight of it for 30 years. Yet tonight, when I stepped out of my apartment to get my dogs out, I heard the Harpeth flooding the Ensworth High School and transformers exploding. We have received close to 18 inches of rain in two days in this part of Nashville, and the Harpeth has overrun us. I saw aerial footage of the flooding tonight on a local station. Bellevue Tennessee is a lake now. I just heard that 180 cars are stranded out on Interstate 40, their drivers still in them. Who could believe that this quiet river, beloved of kayakers and canoers, could be capable of this?

Well, I can. The natural world does not live by our rules. It does not oblige us by being convenient. It is untrustworthy. Crops fail. Droughts come. We forget that rivers are powers, as inexorable as Time. We forget. We are stupid and pave over the watershed. We build on floodplains because no one remembers what rivers do. I remember, as a child growing up in Connecticut, the day my father drove me to Farmington to see the flooding on the Farmington River. Houses to their roofs in water. I remember visiting my grandmother in Ansonia, Connecticut when the Naugatuck River flooded. We stood and watched televisions and washing machines bobbing downstream.

Yet- I bought a house on the Harpeth , and it is now in the Harpeth. Thank God I no longer own it. The river was too close. I am sad for my old neighbors with their greenhouses and swing sets. For the neighbor who grew a Lady Banks rose on his porch pillar. For the Kurdish family up the street, proud in their home.