Читать книгу Disaster in Paradise - Amanda Bath - Страница 5

Chapter 1: Countdown to Zero

It was the summer of 2012, and I’d last seen my mother, June Bath, in January when I visited her in England for three weeks. June still lived in our family home in southwest London, the house my brother and I had known since adolescence; she’d been alone there since my father’s death a decade earlier. Late winter gave way to early spring and I had to face up to the fact that my mother was showing alarming symptoms of dementia. Her neighbours on either side kept an eye on her. My devoted cousin visited regularly,using all her powers of reassurance, but June sometimes phoned her more than a dozen times a day, and knocked on the neighbours’ front doors late at night, agitated and confused.

I’d been going over from Canada three times a year, but my mother’s needs were increasing. In late May she sounded distraught as she pleaded with me on the phone to move up my next trip, scheduled for mid-June. “Darling, I need you so badly; I don’t know what’s wrong; I think I’m losing my mind.” I was glad my ticket was booked, and decided not to change the date; I was working almost full time. I would leave Johnson’s Landing on Tuesday, June 12, and be with her on June 14.

But over the weekend, just four days before I arrived, my mother had two falls in the garden; she broke her ankle in the first and fractured her right wrist in the second. Our attentive neighbour, shocked to see June hobbling around, her ankle and wrist black and swollen, insisted on taking her to the accident and emergency department of the nearby hospital. There, the medical staff realized that something else was wrong, as my mother became increasingly frantic.

“I want to go home, I insist on being allowed to leave. You cannot keep me here against my will!” June argued her case quite plausibly at first, but then delirium took hold. She locked herself inside the ward and couldn’t be persuaded to open the door for over an hour. Lacking insight into her injuries, she tottered across the room and fell down again in a vain attempt to demonstrate how mobile she was.

My mother looked pale and undernourished. The doctors held her under observation for forty-eight hours and I talked to them, en route to Vancouver airport. I made it plain that, although I was on my way, June was in no fit state to go home. Finally, the consultant geriatrician declared that my mother “lacked mental capacity.” A nursing home specializing in dementia care was willing to admit her, very much against her will. On Wednesday the two nurse-managers collected her by taxi.

On Thursday morning I arrived in London, jet-lagged and disoriented. For the first time ever, my mother was not at home to greet me. The house showed tragic evidence of her struggles—she’d written her own phone number five times on the wall next to the telephone; mouldy food lay forgotten in the fridge; mail had not been opened.

The nursing home was a long bus ride away, followed by a ten-minute walk. I was impressed by its cheery, clean appearance. Exquisite arrangements of fresh flowers brightened the entrance hall; I found orchids in the bathroom. The staff were compassionate, friendly and reassuring. “We’ll take good care of June. You mustn’t worry.” But of course I worried.

During my daily visits my mother was sometimes delusional, believing she now lived in Spain—a country she adored. On other days she thought she’d sold her house and bought the nursing home! The rooms were rather large, she confided, and she hoped the maintenance wouldn’t be too much for her. On days of intense agitation she’d rip down the family photos I’d taped to her wall, empty her clothes out of the drawers and wardrobe and beg me to take her home. “You must help me, Mandy! If you leave me here, I’ll die!”

But the days were running out and I knew I’d have to leave. We watched one last Wimbledon tennis match on TV together as I held her soft hand, knobbly with arthritis. My poor, darling mother was a forlorn sight, with plaster casts on her leg and forearm, her eyes puffy, her expression anxious and bewildered. She wouldn’t let me leave. I had to pretend I was just popping out to the toilet.

I took a deep breath, held myself together somehow and walked out of her room without daring to look back, closing my ears to her plaintive voice calling after me, “Mandy! Darling, where are you going?” The heartache was so agonizing I could hardly breathe.

The rest of my family assured me I’d done the right thing but still I felt guilty and disloyal: I was a bad daughter who had let her mother down. I boarded the aircraft to Vancouver and cried inconsolably as far as Greenland, to the consternation of the flight attendant. Then I dried my eyes, blew my nose and took a deep breath. It was over. I could do no more. My mother was in good hands; the immediate worry was taken care of. I was going home. Eight hours later a tiny propeller-driven Dash-8 carried me from Vancouver to the West Kootenay’s regional airport in Castlegar, towards my beloved husband, Christopher. The date was Tuesday, July 3, 2012.

Christopher picked me up in Nelson. We had five days together in the Landing before he would be leaving for Eugene, Oregon, to visit his mother. He intended to depart on Sunday, July 8, but, as usual, was twenty-four hours behind schedule. He slowly readied himself, packed the car, tidied things away and checked the tasks off his list. He worked methodically up until the last moment and slept little. He didn’t want to leave; neither of us ever liked to step out from our quiet paradise into the bustling larger world. We were enchanted, held bodily under the spell of this place, and leaving took an effort of will.

That weekend Dan Miles and Gerald Garnett, friends from Kaslo, were on a multi-day kayaking trip with their wives. The men decided to kayak over to our bay Sunday morning, and stopped by for a quick visit. Delighted, we invited them in and plied them with tea, toast and eggs. We laughed and chatted in the sunlit kitchen around the old oak dining table.

After they left, one of the last tasks Christopher decided to accomplish was to set the sheets of forest green steel roofing against the side of the house, ready to be lifted into position. This was the penultimate stage of a lengthy project: re-roofing the house. The pieces were long, heavy and delicate. He used our trailer and “George,” the loyal old Chevy pickup truck that belonged to our friend Paul Hunter, to bring them down to the house from the community hall where they’d been safely stored under tarps for several months. One by one we lifted each razor-edged sheet of steel and laid it onto a wooden frame Christopher had constructed, angled up against the side of the house, outside the bathroom. Almost four thousand dollars’ worth of prime roofing material was carefully staged, ready for his return.

On Sunday afternoon Christopher suggested one last boat ride along the shore. We puttered north to Greg Utzig and Donna MacDonald’s cabin and found Greg’s boat inundated and half-submerged, filled with pebbles and driftwood; we hoisted it up the bank, clear of the exceptionally high water. Greg was a hydrologist who kept an eagle eye on Kootenay Lake levels, but even he had not foreseen how high the lake would rise that year.

Back on the water, Christopher identified yet another promising driftwood log that had to be tied to the stern and towed home for the ongoing garden beautification project. We also found a metal first aid kit floating in the water. I wagered a bet that the contents would be wet but I lost: the box was completely dry inside, filled with bandages and ointments of a very dated vintage. It was fun beachcombing at this time of year—no end of interesting things toppled off decks and docks in the spring storms, bobbed northward on the prevailing wind and floated into the Landing bay.

Monday, July 9

We kissed goodbye and Christopher drove off at seven a.m. in our car, “Mitzi.” He carried along fewer tools than usual, a suitcase of smarter clothes for the big city, his passport and some food for the road.

While Christopher was gone I would concentrate on restoring my health and energy; the upsetting time with my mother had exhausted me. And I would make the most of the good weather—it had finally stopped raining after a month of deluges. I’d sit on the deck enjoying the view, putter in the garden, make comforting soups and read. Sympathetic and understanding, Lew McMillan gave me the week off from my part-time job.

I spent hours on the deck, moving my brown lounge chair from sunshine to shade, often placing it close to the far corner post where I could watch the lake. It felt like a ship’s deck, wrapped around the south and west walls, surrounded by water. Like so much else about the house it was unfinished, with treacherous, rotting steps, no railing and faded paint, but it was a glorious place to sit, my ocean liner on the shore, with its colourful fringe of geraniums and herbs along the perimeter.

I was grateful to have this quiet time to reflect and rest before engaging with the normal routine again. Lying back in my lounge chair, feeling just a little self-indulgent when there was so much work to do in the garden, I watched the parent swallows at the nesting box under the eave beside the front door. It was the only local pair to have successfully hatched a family after the cold weather and torrential rains in June.

Back and forth they flew—making a long looping dive to the box, delivering a morsel of food and then swooping away, always taking the same route: across the deck, through the gap between the big fir and the cottonwood tree and out over the lake, gliding and twisting in the bright summer air with endless energy for their vital task. Watching them day after day I drew strength from their seeming confidence, their focus, their mission to complete the reproductive imperative. Their minds held no doubt or anxiety; they simply got on with the business at hand. I was comforted by their positive attitude as I grappled with the worries about my mother, and my guilt at leaving her in the nursing home.

In the late evening one parent (the male, I had decided) often perched on the topmost branch of a dead snag, his white breast flashing in the last rays of sunshine as he surveyed his domain and enjoyed a well-earned rest.

During that period Ozzie was constantly at my side. He was uncommonly attentive, so much so that I remarked to Christopher on the phone, “I don’t know what’s with Ozzie, he doesn’t let me out of his sight.” Normally he wasn’t allowed outside the house in daylight, to protect birds from the great black hunter, but I relented, letting him join me on the deck, and he snuggled in my lap in the lounge chair, purring with delight.

Indoors I would look up, suddenly conscious of being watched, and he’d be gazing at me from across the room with his deep yellow-green eyes. I would tell him how beautiful he was and how much I loved him. Many childless adults live in this way, lavishing parental affection onto a pet. I called him my “furry son,” and my “baby boy.” He clearly adored both of us in his feline way. About nine years old, early middle age for a cat, he had trained his humans well, and everything was right in his world.

In the afternoon I walked up the hill to visit Jillian Madill. The Madills had lived in the Landing since 1985, a retired couple quietly devoted to one another and to Tumbles, their cat. John, seventy-two, had retired seven years earlier from BC Hydro, and had worked at nearby Duncan Dam. Jillian and I had got to know one another while staining the cedar siding of our neighbours’ house and outbuildings and had been friends for more than fifteen years. Hardly a week went by without a get-together for tea and a chat.

That sunny afternoon her open-plan perennial bed was a profusion of colour, a sea of blue delphiniums and campanula, pink and mauve columbine, yellow lilies, burgundy japonica, geraniums and scarlet bergamot. The raspberries were plumping out and beginning to blush pink; it would be a bountiful crop. We cruised the rows of vegetables and discussed the serious business of growing food: beans, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, onions and corn. Jillian’s devotion and hard work had created a garden filled with hope and promise. The rain had been a boon, and now the hot sunshine was working its magic. I remarked on the box of purple petunias that cascaded down from the upstairs balcony, and the enormous pots of begonias and pansies beside the front door.

We sat as usual in the cozy dining nook off the kitchen, having tea and bikkies and swapping news. “How are all your house projects progressing?” Jillian asked.

“We hope to finish off the new roof as soon as Christopher gets back. It’s taken three years but we’re almost done, and Christopher’s excited about laying the steel down. But then of course there’s the bedroom and the deck to finish!” We laughed and shook our heads at the time it took some of us to bring projects to completion in this mellow place. It was a Kootenay thing.

The subject of elderly mothers was a bond between us. Jillian’s mother was in far better health than my mother, leading an active, independent life in Kaslo. I related my agonies of guilt at abandoning my mother in the nursing home; Jillian assured me I’d done the right thing, the only thing I could have done in the circumstances. We watched a deer and her two fawns grazing in the shady meadow below the house, a scene of perfect pastoral bliss.

Back home, I emailed all the residents of Johnson’s Landing, asking for a ride to town next day. I wanted to go to Kaslo to attend a meeting of our newly formed hospice society. This was an exciting development and I hoped to join the board. The care of the dying and bereaved was dear to my heart and I wanted to offer our new society whatever knowledge and experience I had.

In the past, a neighbour always offered to take me along when I didn’t have a vehicle for some reason, but on this occasion there was complete silence. Apparently, nobody was driving to Kaslo that Tuesday morning—it was the first time in almost twenty years that I hadn’t found a ride when I needed it! But I did receive a call from Jillian, offering to take me in on Thursday instead. Jillian liked to make Thursday her shopping day because Kaslo’s health food grocery store received its fresh produce that day. She slightly disapproved of Christopher going off and leaving me for so long without a car, and wanted to help me out. I thanked her and we agreed to go to Kaslo together on Thursday morning.

I wrote to the hospice group and explained my predicament, but also admitted that it was hard for me to do much of anything just then, other than sleep, cry and try to make sense of what had happened to my mother, and my part in it. I found myself writing: “Perhaps there is a reason for the fates keeping me at home on Tuesday.” Chelsea Van Koughnett, the leader of our hospice group, reassured me that all would be well; I should stay home and rest.

Tuesday, July 10

In the morning I visited Kurt Boyer, our nearest neighbour, who was about to leave for Toronto to have a hernia operation. Kurt had lived in Johnson’s Landing since 1971, and in 1974 bought his piece of land from Ruth Burt. He was self-contained, self-sufficient, almost never left the land and filled his time with mechanical projects, inventions, reading and his vegetable garden. He ventured to Kaslo or to Nelson, the nearest town, only when absolutely necessary, so this trip to Toronto was a major event.

He’d manufactured a new pair of shoes especially for the occasion. Raised in the tropics, Kurt had walked barefoot for his first twenty years and no commercial shoe or boot could accommodate his broad, splay-toed feet. He created his own personal lasts, formed rubber into sole moulds and affixed leather uppers with rivets. The results fit, and were pleasing to the eye, if a little unusual.

I took note of Kurt’s instructions for watering the tomato plants in the greenhouse, then hugged him and wished him safe travels. I turned away and strolled down his untamed driveway, fringed with thimbleberry bushes, then crossed the road and took the shortcut path back to our house, about two hundred metres distant. It was extremely rare to have both Christopher and Kurt away at the same time and I felt just a little vulnerable. I was still so weary and found even simple tasks almost overwhelming.

The afternoon found me in my place on the lounger by the corner post when I noticed something odd. A coffee-coloured slick, a brown ribbon about half a metre wide, had suddenly appeared along the lakeshore, emanating from the mouth of Gar Creek. I slipped on my shoes, climbed gingerly down the precarious steps from the deck and hurried across the yard to the driveway bridge to inspect the creek. The water was the colour of a well-brewed tea. I looked upstream towards the mountain. What was happening up there? It wasn’t unusual to see the creek run dirty at this time of the year, though I couldn’t recall a change so abrupt and dramatic. But who knew? I probably wasn’t thinking clearly.

Then the smell hit me—earthy, dank, with a tinge of something like pine disinfectant, wafting down the creek draw. Obviously the odour indicated broken and mashed pine trees up above us, but what else was going on? I recalled a similar smell back in February after an avalanche of snow brought tons of tree debris down the creek as far as Gerry Rogers’s driveway, a kilometre or so upstream. But this stench was pungent, to the point of nauseating—odd and worrying. I squatted on the tiny bridge and watched the strange opaque water thundering underneath me. An osprey wheeled overhead, shrieking to its mate, but I barely heard it over the roar of the creek.

While I was in England Christopher had told me over the phone that it was raining non-stop. Obviously, I hadn’t taken in the information, or considered what that much rain could mean, because I was so preoccupied with my own worries. When I arrived home on July 3, the weather turned sunny and temperatures soared to over thirty degrees Celsius. The heavier-than-usual snowpack was melting fast, which would explain, I thought, why the creek had been running so full. Now the water was this tea-brown colour and the smell made me shiver.

Gar Creek, where it crossed the property, was normally a tranquil stream that gurgled under the bridge, meandered between cedar trees and gushed over rocks slick with algae down the last few metres to the lake. The big old cedars along the bank suggested it was a well-established, mature creek that had been running undisturbed in its gravel channel for centuries.

The little wooden bridge in our driveway provided me an excellent vantage point. Various large boulders and old tree trunks in the creek served as measuring devices against which I could estimate the height of the water. One of my measurement boulders was now submerged and lost to view. An old cedar stump was only half visible. The wild blackcurrant bushes on the bank were being whipped and leaf-stripped by the torrent.

Wednesday, July 11

In the early light, after a night kept awake by the roaring water and the terrible dank-earth and pine smell, I stood on the bridge in my nightshirt and was shocked to see that the water was no longer tea-coloured, and no longer water. Thick chocolate mousse slurry was painting a mudpack on every leaf and twig, high up the bank.

I ran to the road above our house. Parallel to our driveway, the unpaved main road crossed Gar Creek for the third and last time and terminated a hundred metres farther on at the beach parking area and turnaround. Two culverts channelled the creek under the road. To my horror, the southerly culvert was about 70 percent blocked, while the northerly one ran at full capacity, disgorging a powerful jet that pounded against the bank.

The bank was beginning to erode. If it gave way, the contents of the creek would have a direct downhill route to our basement. Oh no, it didn’t bear thinking about—our basement was jam-packed, filled to bursting with tools, books, two freezers, machinery, boxes of tiles, trim wood, our record collection, slides and photos, filing cabinets and all of Christopher’s clothes in cedar chests and dresser drawers. I wouldn’t know where to begin if everything was flooded with thick stinking liquid mud. My exhausted brain didn’t want even to entertain this nightmare scenario.

At 6:30 a.m. everyone in the community received an email from Loran Godbe, who lived with his mother, Linda, and Gerry Rogers in the house highest up the mountain; he was our lookout perched on the hill. I remember thinking, “He’s up early!” knowing that Loran was a night owl. But he hadn’t gone to bed yet that morning. His words were troubling.

Hi All—

At 6:00 am this morning I heard a tremendous roar coming down the creek draw. I went running down our path to the creek, and got there in time to see a one to two-foot high (above the “normal” level of the creek these days) surge of chocolate-coloured water come past the community intake. After I got back to the house, I heard some more booming and roaring up the valley somewhere, and as I write this, I can hear occasional boulders rolling in the creek up there.

When I was on our trail near the creek, I could not hear the roar of the coming surge over the normal creek noise until a couple of seconds before I saw it. I think the Gar Creek draw is a VERY DANGEROUS place to be for a while (few days). This also applies to our driveway where it crosses the creek. By the way, the washout on our driveway is now too wide to safely jump across.

Be safe, Loran

Loran—contemplative and acutely observant of the natural world—was our prophet, calling in the wilderness. He monitored the changes in Gar Creek as they occurred, and this was the first of two warnings he gave us by email. But, in the past, he’d sometimes speculated about hypothetical scenarios that hadn’t transpired and I tended to take what he said with a pinch of salt. I persuaded myself that this trouble was something happening “up the hill,” irrelevant to me. I closed his message and opened the next email.

The continued surges in the creek severed the emergency waterline from Moss Beard Spring on Gerry Rogers’s land to the community’s water distribution box across the creek, which supplied potable water to eighteen households on the south side of the Landing. This waterline was itself a temporary fix after the avalanche in February had wrecked and buried the permanent intake. The icy avalanche debris had not yet fully melted away. Local residents and several visitors were currently working on the waterlines in and out of the creek.

My sister-in-law, Renata Klassen, drove into the Landing mid-morning from where she now lived in Kaslo with Lennie, her elderly golden retriever cross, and provisions for a two-week stay in the post office cabin. This tiny dwelling, a treasured heritage landmark, had offered shelter to countless temporary residents over the years.

Renata, six years younger than Christopher, is a free-spirited woman who prefers not to be tied to one place. Where Christopher resembles their mother, Ren looks like Hanno, their father. She has his piercing blue eyes, a square jaw and a head of glorious, thick, copper-blonde hair.

Renata immediately remarked on the pungent smell from the creek. I took her up to the road above the house to show her the area of creek bank beside the culvert I was so worried about. We devised a plan, and Ren quickly collected two heaping wheelbarrow loads of gravel and some big rocks, and helped me improvise sandbags by filling a tarp with gravel and laying the sausage-like roll alongside the leaky bank. She had the physique for such tasks and I was encouraged by her presence and positive energy beside me. We anchored the gravel sausage with the rocks and stood back to admire our handiwork. It was a relief to have done something and I felt proud of our achievement. Such a tiny endeavour, but it was comforting and seemed to do the trick.

I’d made some vegetable soup and we had lunch together, also polishing off a big salad from the garden. Ozzie woke up and seemed delighted to see Ren as she grabbed him for a cuddle. Apart from Christopher and me, only Renata and Virginia (my mother-in-law) were permitted to take such liberties. Ren complimented me on my soup, then went down to the post office cabin to unpack and feed Lennie.

I spent my afternoon on the deck weaving a trellis to support Christopher’s sweet pea plants. They stood four centimetres tall in smart new cedar planters, their delicate tendrils groping for support. Beaver-gnawed twigs from the beach became a triangular frame, and I wove a dream-catcher-like web inside with sinew. The task took several hours and I became stiff from squatting on the ground. Ozzie watched with interest from a deck chair, occasionally batting at the tail end of the sinew, but mostly content just observing the curious things that humans do with their time.

That night I was afraid. I lay in bed, sleepless and apprehensive, wishing Christopher were with me. The creek boomed under the bridge across the yard, its smell so oppressive I wondered if the house might already be inundated. At midnight I couldn’t contain my worry, so I jumped out of bed and grabbed a flashlight to check the bank above the house. The gravel sausage seemed to be holding things together but the beam of light illuminated the thick gushing slurry that splattered the tarp and plastered every grass blade on the bank. I returned to bed and slept fitfully through the rest of the night.

Thursday, July 12

The day dawned as perfect a summer’s day as you could wish for. The glass crystal that hung in the kitchen window sent rainbows of morning sunlight dancing over the walls and ceiling. A chipmunk scurried along the window ledge among the leaves and tendrils of Virginia creeper that had smothered the east wall and gradually crept across the windowpane. We hacked it back whenever it threatened to hide our view behind leafy fingers of soft green light.

A longer email from Loran, sent in the early hours, described what he was observing in Gar Creek. My heart sank as I read about the increasingly powerful surges in water volume. I wrote an email to everyone in the community describing my concern that the bank might give way under the pressure from the one culvert that was channelling almost all the water. I wrote, “I wonder if Highways could be persuaded to come out to clear the blocked culvert? It would also prevent the road itself from washing out.” Then I shut my MacBook and hurried to get dressed because Jillian and I were going to Kaslo.

I turned off the radio, then collected my purse, list and shopping bags and set them by the front door. I ate a quick breakfast and afterwards went to the garden to empty the compost bucket and say goodbye to Renata; she was putting things in jars, hanging up her clothes and settling into the cabin. I cut some peonies and foxgloves and put them in a vase on the mauve picnic table. We’d moved it onto the lawn next to the cabin because the beach was underwater.

Renata told me she’d already taken Lennie for a long walk beside the creek that morning. On the way back she threw the tennis ball for him, trying not to send it down the ravine, but of course it did roll over and Lennie plunged after it. He had a struggle climbing back up the steep bank so Ren got down on her hands and knees and pulled him up. He was tired when they got back, and now lay snoozing on the cool cabin floor.

Ren and I said goodbye, then at ten to nine I closed the front door of our house and walked up the grassy path past the water box and Ruth Burt’s precious California redwood tree, now more than four metres tall and growing fast. I took a last look at our improvised sandbagging, wondering if it would hold until I got back after lunch. Crossing the road I climbed the bank to our shortcut trail through a patch of birch and wild roses. The ground was loamy from years of leaf mulch, and was sprinkled with calypso orchids and tiny white queen’s cup in spring. Now it was shady and dappled green with clumps of sphagnum moss. A varied thrush sang as I walked.

An ancient cedar tree stood at the top of the trail beside the road, its enormous hairy trunk the biggest landmark around. Owls roosted here, I knew from the piles of pellet droppings I saw on the ground in one particular spot. Kurt’s driveway lay across the road from the big cedar and I took a moment to pop up to his greenhouse and check the tomato plants.

A few metres farther along the road, past the double cottonwood trees, and after the road made its second creek crossing, I took another shortcut up the steep bank, this time a dry and dusty path, barely shaded by sparse and straggling jack pines. Then I was on the road again, my route overlooking Gar Creek all the way up to Creek Corner. The formerly crystalline, delicate watercourse was a pounding, murky, stinking presence. It felt ominous, frightening, and I was beginning to loathe that earthy-pine smell.

I wondered what Jillian and John were making of the sudden change and was looking forward to meeting up with Jillian to talk about it. I hurried along thinking about Kaslo and our house there. Chores awaited, I knew. I could imagine what the grass looked like—I’d be up to my ears in things to do, certainly.

I was wearing a summer dress I didn’t like for its dull checked pattern, selected only because it was sleeveless and cool cotton. I’d examined and rejected so many other more beautiful summer dresses. But I did put on two precious pieces of jewellery. One was a small jade bear necklace I’d given to my mother a few years before. She returned it because her arthritic fingers struggled with the clasp. And I wore my favourite pearl earrings: single pearls in gold settings, a gift from my mother on a trip to Gibraltar a decade earlier, shortly after my father died.

My purse contained my wallet and Canadian credit cards, my digital camera, my iPod and a small address book.

I left as one does on any morning. I didn’t reach down to pet Ozzie, curled on the bed enjoying his usual morning nap. I didn’t even think to say goodbye to Ozzie.

Jillian met me in her comfortable silver Buick with its grey leather seats as deep and soft as armchairs, and we commented on recent developments with the creek. Wednesday had been a frightening day for them too.

John had been one of the work crew attempting to reconnect the waterline above Gerry Rogers’s driveway; John Madill and Val Webber were by tradition the residents who usually volunteered to take care of water system problems. John, Val and Gerry worked on the waterline, watched by Loran, neighbours Harvey Armstrong and John Lerbscher, plus John’s son, daughter-in-law and baby grandson, and a visiting student garden worker, Aspen. The creek flow, dark and thick as chocolate syrup, fluctuated wildly.

As she drove, Jillian described what John had told her. “The work crew walked along an ice shelf next to the creek to get to and from the waterline. Gerry was on the ice shelf when Loran heard another surge coming and saw the water rise, pushing a pile of tree debris ahead of it. Loran yelled at the top of his lungs for Gerry to run, which he did, but fortunately there was nothing more behind the surge.”

As they’d stood in the middle of the dark stinking torrent, struggling to reconnect the pipe, Val Webber had turned to Gerry and asked, “Are we safe?” Gerry, without a moment’s hesitation, told him, “No!”

As we neared the Argenta Flats, two trucks passed us in the opposite direction, emblazoned with BC Hydro and Corix logos. My heart sank. I was fairly sure they were on their way to Johnson’s Landing to install the dreaded smart meters. Many of us had been campaigning against and objecting vigorously to these electronic replacement meters, which broadcast information about our power usage in the form of electromagnetic waves. I’d pinned a notice beside our old analogue meter, refusing permission to replace it, but it would make no difference. I feared I was going to find a smart meter stuck on the side of the house when I returned.

Our drive was uneventful. We arrived in Kaslo at ten a.m. and went about our errands. House chores, indeed, awaited me—and as I expected, the yard in particular needed urgent attention. Uli Holtkamp from Argenta, one of my closest friends, had decided at the last minute to join me for lunch; I found his phone message on the answering machine, saying he’d be there just after noon. I set the table with a vase of flowers in the centre in anticipation of a delightful visit.

I extracted the ancient gas-powered lawn mower from the shed and by eleven thirty was struggling to mow the lawn, weeds mostly, shaggy and difficult to cut after all that rain in June. The mower clogged, almost stalled and I had to backtrack and repeat my mow-line. It was tedious and sweaty work.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Andy Shadrack, our regional district’s area director for the past eight years, waving at me. He looked uncharacteristically agitated, crossing the lawn towards me almost at a run. I shut off the mower as he approached. Christopher and I appreciated Andy’s conscientiousness in representing and advocating for our diverse and opinionated local population.

Without any preamble, he broke the news. “There’s been a serious mudslide in Johnson’s Landing.”

I gaped at him, sweat trickling down my face.

“Who lives at 2051 Johnson’s Landing Road?”

I looked at the swath of grass I’d managed to mow and, frowning, swung my gaze back to Andy. “That’s Kurt’s house.”

Andy’s voice dropped to almost a whisper. “They say it’s gone.”

I began to shake. Lightheaded, I followed Andy back to his house, three doors up the street from ours. His partner, Gail, sat me down and handed me a cup of water. I sipped and talked aloud. “What an amazing stroke of luck that Kurt’s in Toronto for the hernia surgery. My God, is it just—his house? How could that be possible?” Andy got busy on the phone, but information was hard to come by. I rose to leave and Gail hugged me. Andy signalled he’d let me know when he found out more.

I hurried back down the street, sweat drying on my body. I rinsed my face in the bathroom. Kurt’s house? The phone rang: on the other end Renata sounded hysterical, close to tears. “I don’t want to say anything unless you have somebody with you.” Somewhere deep inside me, a cold hard lozenge of knowledge sank and anchored. I already knew what she was about to say. I took a deep breath and tried to keep my voice even.

“It’s okay, Ren. Andy already told me there’s been a slide. What’s happened?”

She hesitated and then blurted, “Your house is totally gone! It’s just a pile of logs and mud!”

So Andy was misinformed—it wasn’t Kurt’s house, 2051, but ours, 2075. Ours! Of course! That made more sense. Kurt’s house was above the bank, ours much closer to the creek. Ozzie sprang to mind, cozy on the bed. “And Ozzie? What about Ozzie?”

Renata had no news of Ozzie. I pulled the office chair over to the phone and cradled my damp head in my hand. Renata had more to tell me. Val Webber and his girls, Diana and Rachel, were buried in their house. The slide had also covered Petra Frehse’s house. Renata described briefly her own miraculous escape, and urged me to stay in Kaslo. I hung up, bewildered. How could a slide down the creek reach Val’s house so far away?

I could barely take in the details of how Renata had run to safety just before the landslide swept past her, missing the post office cabin by a few metres. Outside the Kaslo house nothing had changed, the sun was shining. Not knowing what else to do, I attacked the wretched lawn again until the mower ran out of gas. Ren’s words hammered in my skull: “Your house is totally gone!” I couldn’t grasp it or believe it. How could it be gone? Where had it gone? Where was Ozzie?

I went indoors and grabbed a glass of water. Just after noon it occurred to me that I had to tell Christopher. But what would I say? How could such an impossible thing be true, the house gone, the post cabin, only metres away, untouched? Houses don’t just disappear. Was Renata right? Why hadn’t anyone else called?

I phoned Eugene and spoke to Virginia. Christopher was out shopping, enjoying himself in the big city he loved. If it was true and the house was gone, he had to be told. I found myself speaking very slowly, enunciating every syllable. I told Virginia, “A terrible thing has happened. A landslide has destroyed our house. Make Christopher sit down before you tell him.” She gasped and started asking questions, but I had to cut her off. I didn’t know the answers and I couldn’t talk any longer.

As I put down the phone, Jillian’s Buick pulled up outside. I ran down the path, still in my sweaty work pants and ragged T-shirt. One look at her face told me she’d heard the news. After she received John’s phone call at her mother’s house, Jillian had driven all over Kaslo looking for me (I was at Andy Shadrack’s at the time). She checked the grocery stores, then, on the spur of the moment, went into the insurance office, interrupting the manager with a customer. “Excuse me, but there’s just been a landslide in Johnson’s Landing. My house is gone. Is it covered by our insurance?” The manager looked at her helplessly. Her reply etched itself into Jillian’s brain: “She said, ‘Now is not the time to talk about it.’ And I knew immediately that we were not covered.”

We stood together in the narrow band of shade under the eave at the back of the house. John was okay, but like Renata he had had a very close call. He’d given Jillian only sketchy details: the landslide had sideswiped their house; an enormous log went through it like a skewer, from front to back. Their cat, Tumbles, was missing. The glorious garden I had so admired three days before, the guesthouse, garage and vehicles were all gone. The fate of Petra Frehse, Val Webber and his daughters was unknown. I could not yet visualize what had happened. It made no sense that Val’s house could have been touched. Easier to envisage how Petra’s cabin, nestled near the ravine, would be affected.

Jillian was anxious to be with John, find Tumbles and assess the damage; she decided to drive back immediately. I would have to stay behind. If what people were saying was true, what alternative did I have?

I said the word “refugee” aloud.

In my pocket I found the deposit slip I’d been given at the credit union with the exact time of my transaction: “12 July 2012: 10:35:04.” That had to be close to the moment the landslide began. Why hadn’t I felt it in my bones? How could I have been oblivious to a personal and community-wide blow of such magnitude?

Uli arrived from Argenta just as Jillian was leaving. I waved goodbye to Jillian then threw my arms around him. “Did you hear what happened?” He shook his head.

“Everything’s gone!” And I told him what I knew.

“That explains it,” Uli said as we went inside. “Driving in I passed hordes of emergency vehicles with sirens blaring and lights flashing, racing up the lake. I had no idea where they were going or what it was all about.”

I cried for the first time as he told me, “I knew I had to see you today. I had this weird, powerful voice inside telling me I must come.” I looked at him and nodded. Uli and I have often had such inexplicable psychic connections, with one of us knowing instantly when the other one needs help. He went to the kitchen, got out the bread and found cheese in the fridge. “You have to eat something.”

I had no appetite but chewed obediently. He held my hand. I looked at the clock. I couldn’t understand anything. I swallowed. I chewed. It was such a comfort having Uli right there beside me. I’d left home at nine a.m. and now they said my home didn’t exist anymore. I kept looking at the clock. It was now two p.m.

“Should we go and visit Ann?” Uli had brought flowers from his garden for our friend Ann MacNab, who was terminally ill and had recently moved into palliative care at the Victorian Hospital of Kaslo.

“Yes, you know something? I’d really like to do that.” I hadn’t seen Ann in several years but had heard how ill she now was. I stood up and went to change out of my work clothes. My hands were shaking and icy cold, despite the hot day, as I stripped and put on the ugly checked dress I’d worn that morning. I hated it, wanted to rip it to shreds, but I had nothing else to wear. I threw cold water on my face, got into Uli’s green Jeep and we drove the half kilometre up the hill to the hospital.

Ann’s room looked beautiful, filled with flowers and artwork, books and classical music CDs. Distracted for a moment, I gazed around with pleasure. I hadn’t seen this room for five years. The idea of converting the old operating theatre into a new, purpose-designed palliative care room arose while I was hospice coordinator; we had raised funds and contributed ideas for its design and furnishing. Comfortable and inviting, it was like a normal room, with a hide-a-bed, armchairs, a stereo music system, a TV and a fully equipped kitchen area with a fridge and a microwave oven. Ann said she loved the feel of the room, its restfulness, the sunshine-yellow walls and blue trim, the paintings by local artist Pauline McGeorge and the bird feeder outside the window, rocking with activity under the ginkgo tree.

Ann was in the last stage of her long and illuminating life, serene and accepting, with an inner calm that surrounded her like an aura. A highly intelligent woman with three master’s degrees—in Canadian literature, English literature and librarianship—she spoke with eloquence, wit and good humour. She looked frail and thin but was still very much herself. Taking both my hands in hers she gently held my gaze. “I am so sorry you have lost your home. It was a beautiful place. I knew it well, as you know. I used to visit Ruth there.” This was no time for small talk. Everything we said felt significant, though in my dazed state I could remember almost nothing of our conversation afterwards. But in that moment it soothed me. Ann, who was dying, gave me a valuable gift that afternoon.

I said I would visit her again.

Back at the house the shadows were lengthening, and the lawn-mowing remained unfinished. I spoke to Christopher on the phone and we talked about Ozzie. Might he still be alive? Was he trapped? Injured? It was agonizing not to know. Christopher planned to leave Eugene and drive through the night. The drive would take him around sixteen hours, allowing for a couple of breaks and brief naps.

At about five that afternoon, our long-time friends Bill Wells and Greg Utzig came by, just back from Johnson’s Landing with photos and the first detailed eyewitness account. Bill had owned property in Johnson’s Landing for many years; Greg and Donna still had a summer cabin along the shore from our place. Bill and Greg are soil scientists, intimately familiar with the mountainside above Johnson’s Landing.

Bill told me, “We’d read Loran’s emails and talked about them. His account of Gar Creek’s behaviour rang alarm bells for both of us. The signs he was describing indicated something potentially very dangerous. That’s why we went up there today.” Greg drove from his home in Nelson and picked Bill up in Kaslo, about half an hour later than planned. “I was going to go straight down to your place first,” Greg told me, “to return a tool I’d borrowed from Christopher. If we’d been on time, and been down there at your place…”

The mountain slid fifteen minutes before they arrived. They found the road cut off, and tree debris everywhere. “We were worried about your safety so the first thing we did was get down there and explore around your house,” Greg said. “We found Renata sitting on the beach, very shaken, and she said you weren’t home. We were so relieved.” Greg explained that the landslide had slowed down, running out of material and momentum, by the time it hit the side of our house, folding it diagonally, and collapsing it. The slide had actually ground to a halt a few metres farther on, right at the shoreline.

I shook my head in amazement. “Good grief! If only it could have stopped a bit sooner.”

They’d paddled Greg’s canoe far enough out into the lake to see the whole hillside and sat there, aghast, gazing at the scene in front of them. Bill told me over a cup of tea how bewildered he’d been to see that the slide had jumped out of the creek and spread over the bench of land to the south. He’d noticed something else that troubled him, too: “Where’s the water? Gar Creek’s stopped flowing down in the slide path. We sat there for an hour but there was still no water and I’m worried about that. The question is, when is the creek going to start running again?” I tried to understand Bill’s concern, but then Greg got out his camera and Uli and I were instantly taken by the images on the tiny screen.

Greg’s photos showed how gently the house had shifted, not even dislodging the geraniums from the deck. Everything had collapsed but it was still recognizably our home. Windows had blown out, walls had flipped over and bits of furniture were visible inside. Greg showed me an atmospheric photo taken through a hole into the kitchen, where the roof now rested on the dining table. I felt a sudden burst of hope that Ozzie might still be alive. He could have found refuge in some nook or cranny, or crawled out through a broken window. I clutched at my vision, euphoric from the sudden surge of adrenalin.

Greg made me promise not to go climbing inside the house. He stressed the risk of further slides and I agreed to be sensible, but I’d already hatched a plan to go and search for Ozzie the next morning.

After Greg and Bill left, and while Uli cooked supper, I contacted several friends in Kaslo for help. I needed someone with a motorboat to take me to Johnson’s Landing first thing in the morning. My friend Osa Thatcher crossed the front yard and I ran out to her, babbling about my idea. In typical Osa can-do fashion she volunteered to organize a boat and go with me.

Osa Thatcher and Paul Hunter are our oldest friends from the Landing. Christopher spent nine years helping to build their house. But in March 2007, Paul suffered a spinal cord injury, and he was now in a wheelchair, unable to live full-time in the Landing. They bought a house in Kaslo, just a block away from ours.

Other people were horrified when they heard about my planned boat trip and begged us not to go, but I was hell-bent and determined. Here was something practical and tangible I could do. I was going to hold my darling Ozzie again, and nuzzle my nose in his fur. None of the other losses would matter if he was safe.

Osa confirmed the details of our trip when she returned around eight p.m. with her friend Carole Summer, who brought me homeopathic remedies for grief, fear, shock and trauma. They said the house was gone, but was it really? I’d seen the pictures, yes, but I didn’t believe it. Perhaps we could climb in and find Ozzie alive, salvage the valuables, extract some of the furniture. Perhaps all was not yet lost.

The roof and walls collapsed like a house of cards, crushing everything.

Photo: Greg Utzig