How the River Used to Flood Every Spring
Before the levee, the flood was part of the calendar.
Older residents remember the spring flood the way other people remember a relative - inconvenient, occasionally dangerous, and missed more than expected once it stopped coming.
Before the levee went in, the river flooded the low fields every March with a regularity people planned their entire year around - planting after the water receded, harvesting before the next one might come early.
The levee ended the flooding and, with it, the specific fertility the flooding used to leave behind. Yields on the protected fields have needed fertilizer ever since, in quantities the old farmers still find faintly embarrassing.
I asked one of them if he missed the flood. He thought about it longer than I expected before saying that he missed what it used to leave, which is a different thing, and a more honest one, than missing the flood itself.
