Water, and Lots of It

Today would be a good day for sipping hot tea and baking scones. The skies are battle-ship grey, and the cold rain is coming down in horizontal sheets. Mother Nature decided to take care of the drought. Unfortunately, she procrastinated to the point of having to give us all the rain at once. The parched earth just cannot absorb the rain quickly enough. The pasture in front of our house is now crisscrossed with rivulets of fast moving water. The pond, in which the water had been steadily receding to the point of the banks almost caving in, is now overflowing out to the driveway, which just may be impassable by our car.

We would have had those scones and tea I mentioned, but had to mop the laundry room floor instead – with an inch of water. We thought it had come in from a window which we had forgotten was open, but noticed as we mopped that the water level would just rise again. Our Sisyphean task was the result of not just the window, but water seeping in from below as well.

Side view of driveway.

Already wet, Cesar and I donned our rain coats (and little else – bare skin dries so much easier than clothes) and had a very wet walk-about. We found white water gurgling into the pond via the formerly dry streambeds which feed it. We began to walk through the shin-deep water of the lowest part of the driveway but remembered the shoddily buried electrical wires there and thought better of it. After our little tour of the property, we came back in and had some hot cocoa and listened to the plop plop plop of water droplets falling from the ceiling.

Water flowing out of pond overflow drainage.

I am not complaining. We are wearing our big fluffy bathrobes and just chilling out. The cows will be happy, the grass will be a brilliant green tomorrow, and the frogs are chirping and squeaking and blurping away having their little Dionysian amphibious orgies. The rain has stopped, probably just for a brief respite, the water has receded slightly and the winds have really begun.

Wild Skies

Evening view from the front of La Gaia.

La Gaia is situated in a little valley at the beginning of the sierras. Whoever built this house laid it out very nicely. It faces North exactly, so we have lovely sunrises to our right and mesmerizing sunsets to our left. Being at the edge of the sierras, we also have a nearly constant dry wind that drops down from the hills. I think it is due to that wind that we have such impressive skies here.

Sorry, Montana, but this is big sky country. This evening we were working in the back field and I noticed that suddenly, the light seemed different. Huge clouds had rolled in and there was an opening of clear blue sky right over our heads. The effect was that of a huge but soft spotlight shining down. Everything looked more crisp and defined. Glancing up, I saw part of a large rainbow in the east. Behind me, big dark clouds were rolling in, making the sunset monochromatic and eerily impressive in shades of steel blue, with brilliant patches of light shining through in shimmering metallic shades impossible to describe or reproduce. Big alto-stratus clouds in the north reflected light from the setting sun in shades of pink and purple. Cesar and I just stood there for a while, enjoying the break from our work, and pointed out the various features of the sky to each other. It was nearly 9:00pm and the moon was bright through a thin veil of clouds, but there was still plenty of daylight. These skies are too special for me to waste a moment by running inside to fetch my camera, so I hope that by my description you can paint your own mental picture of the scene.

The sky is something that modern people forget to pay attention to in their hurried lives. I can see how ancient peoples who lived much closer to nature than we do were so aware of their natural environment, especially the movements of the sun and stars. I noticed last night that Orion is slightly more westward than it was when we arrived. That is something I never would have noticed at home since we can barely see the stars there for all of the light pollution.

As I type, the wind is blowing quite briskly. I can hear it moving through the trees and around the house. I think we will have an interesting sky in the morning. We always do.

Fire

This is how things looked when we arrived:

But after nearly two months of drought, we now have this:



Okay, so that was an extreme comparison - photo hyperbole to make a point of just how dry it is here now. As if the lack of rain was not bad enough, conditions are just right for brush fires. By the way, the cow died of unknown causes other than drought, more on that in a later post.

Our personal experience with fire started out on a somewhat light note. As I wrote in my New Year's post, we started out the year playing firefighter in front of Gloria's house. That particular fire burned an area roughly 20 by 30 feet and we were able to get it under control before the real firefighters arrived.

Photo courtesy of Gloria.

That fire was nothing compared to the one now raging just down the street from her house. Fortunately it is a safe distance away. Others are not so fortunate though. Large swaths of hillside are engulfed in flames as I type this. The smoke is illuminated by the fires and looks like billowing red clouds against the night sky. It is rather scary, especially considering there are homes nearby. We do not know how it started. Firefighters have been working all day to try to contain it.

There have been fires in nearby departments as well. In Canelones, the department just to the east of Montevideo, a huge fire started last Thursday near the town of Villa Argentina. According to an article in El Pais on January 2, 2009, translated courtesy of UruguayDailyNews.com, 100 hectares burned there. Poor visibility due to smoke caused lengthy back-ups on the coastal highway and flames were as close as 20 meters to some houses.

As I type, the wind has picked up. I can hear it blowing outside. This is bad for the firefighters. I wish in vain that rain would accompany the wind, but the sky was perfectly clear today, not a cloud in sight.

Rain - Saturday, November 29 2008

A soft fine rain is steadily falling today. All day it has been raining. We need it. After we arrived, we had brief afternoon thunderstorms for a couple of days. Then the rain stopped and it was lovely and sunny, though extremely windy. Wildflowers carpeted the pastures. The road to our house reminded me of the Wizard of Oz for its abundant yellow flowers on either side. The yard had beautiful delicate wildflowers in hues of yellow, orange, red, purple and white. Then everything started to whither and dry.

It had been dry for weeks before the rain came. Cattle in other parts of the country were suffering for lack of water. Near Montevideo, in the department of Canelones, fires consumed 300 hectares (a hectare is equal to 2.2 acres). The water table in the department where we live is high and we have lots of water, so it is very good for cattle and sheep. But still we needed the rain.

So today is a lazy Saturday. We're not doing much besides watching the rain fall. Later we will join friends to barbeque a lamb, which we bought from the carniceria just for today. The evening will be cool and the frogs will sing out their appreciation of the dampness.