Tag exchange, girl, high water

When one goes to bed after 3 am, one doesn't get up till after 10 am. Rule 147?

Overcast sky... hmmm... it will give my transplanted sunflowers a chance to acclimatize and not get sunburnt after living indoors their brief life.

After I gave my "girls" some hay I decided to take down a couple of the protective fences I had put up in the yard. As I rolled up the first fence it started to rain lightly. A soft light rain coming straight down. But enough rain that I stopped and stood under the large pine tree next to the well so I would be out of the rain until it quit.

After breakfast and a shower - no, make that a shower then breakfast - I took down the other two fences and rolled them up. I also gathered the cages I had placed around my young trees so the cattle would not taste test them. I found the one tomato cage elsewhere in the yard. Apparently the cattle had a game of soccer with it. The tree was unmolested.

While my "girls" mowed the yard down low, new dandelions were already popping up yellow here and there around the yard. Can't I have one day without them?!

While friends think I never part with old clothes, I do. Kinda. Today I cut the legs off a really worn out part of pants. Maybe the rest of the pants will be handy when swimming in the river.

With the cooler wetter weather I made a batch of pumpkin bread. Notice I said "pumpkin" and not carrot. I am getting closer to the end of my garden carrots and am saving them for munching on.

With the cloud cover our high today was 76 F -- 10 degrees cooler than yesterday. Lots more humid today.

I rode uptown to exchange the two-piece cattle ear tags for one-piece tags. I had bought the tags at CHS and thought they only carried two-piece tags. I called Murdochs and was told they only carried two-piece tags. I called Dan to tell him I couldn't find one-piece tags. He happened to be at CHS and checked. He found they carried one-piece tags. How did I miss them?! Ah, the two-piece tags are called Y-tags or two-piece tags. The one-piece tags are called Z-tags or snap-on tags. No mention they are one-piece tags.

I then rode over to the county courthouse and the election department. Down Main street Kalispell. On a Friday afternoon. On a spring/summer day. Ergo, lots of traffic. Being on a bicycle helped as I could squeeze between the traffic and parked cars and beat most of the traffic down Main Street to the courthouse.

I gave the election department copies of my drivers license and social security card so I could be enrolled as a county employee to get paid for judging the upcoming elections. $6.50 an hour. Woo hoo! Just above minimum wage. I don't think anyone is doing the judging for the money.

I also picked up my absentee ballot for the upcoming primary election as the election officials were putting the ballots into envelopes to mail out.

On the ride home I decided to take a short jog over to the Flathead River by the Old Steel bridge and see how high the river was. Plenty high. Fast moving and brown. Each side of the river has a day use park and I rode over the bridge to the other side. The bridge is a single lane and only one vehicle is allowed on it at a time. Believe me you want to follow this rule as the county put some metal plates down last year over the old rotted planks, else the bridge had to be closed. I guess the State is scheduled to replace the bridge in a year or two.

A car from one side, then the other would cross. As I was on a bicycle I followed a car when it was halfway across. I don't weigh that much.

As I rode into the day use park an older Ford Bronco with a loud muffler passed me on the gravel drive to the river. It was parked at the end of the lot near the bridge when I arrived at the river. A young woman was walking across the lot and down to the river where a railing stuck out of the brown water. After rolling up her pants legs she waded in the water then climbed onto the railing and sat there. A few minutes later a young man came from the Bronco and passing me walked down to the water's edge to talk with the girl.

I watched the water swirl below me. Below me, along my river bank, the water moved upstream until it got near the bridge then curved out to join the flow downstream. The movement was obvious from the water's flow but small logs heightened the effect. Will a log break free and join the downstream current this time around? There goes one!

The girl came out of the water and walked towards me on her way back to the Bronco. The guy stayed behind. Her pants were still rolled up to just below her knees. She wore a light sweatshirt over a light lime green low cut spaghetti top blouse. She was thin, no more than 100 lbs; she had what I call "Doonesbury" eyes: hooded with dark circles under them. Her skin was pale which made her dark eyes stand out more. She looked to be anywhere from 17 to 20. It was hard to tell as it is hard to gauge a person's age the further in age one is from them.

I asked, "Is the water cold?"

"Oh yes, very cold! I didn't know it would be so deep. I was here three, four days ago and there was no water there. I never seen it so high. Look... I rolled up my pants and they still got wet."

Her pants were wet at the bottom where they were rolled up.

"Well, with the 80 degree temperatures the water will rise fast from the melting snow."

"I didn't realize melting snow can do that. "I came here in 1996 and I never seen it so high."

"Really? 1996 was a record snow year..."

"Right. 13 inches. 13 feet. Something like that. I don't know."

"I would have thought in 1996 the river would have been higher from all that snow."

"I never seen it so high."

10 years ago she would have been, what, 7? 8? 9? Maybe 10?

"I swam in Flathead Lake last week and that was cold!"

"Yah, it's early spring. The lake would be cold. Why were you swimming in the lake this time of year?"

Now the guy she was with came walking up.

"He and his friend said I was bad luck and I got mad and jumped out of the boat into the lake and swam to shore."

The guy didn't say anything and walked over to his Bronco.

"I was so cold I didn't think I would make it. But I did."

"I hope you had a nice hot shower to warm up."

"But I didn't. I had to call my mom to come get me I was so cold. My sister was in a coma, in the hospital. We don't know why but she was... in a coma."

"Oh, sorry to hear that."

"I swam across the river here last year. It was during the summer so the river was lower. But I almost drowned. I didn't think I would make it."

"Oh... uh..."

"A few years ago you should have seen all the big logs floating down the river. That was cool."

"With the higher water maybe we'll see large logs later."

"The logs were a few years ago, after the big fires. Our place almost got burnt by the fire."

"Oh, you lived near Hungry Horse... or near the Park?"

"We lived in Bigfork. Then Lakeside. Then out in the boonies. In the middle of nowhere. The boonies we call it."

None of the places she mentioned had the fires that year. But by now I realized she wasn't the sharpest stick in the woods.

She said, "Well, I gotta go. Don't go swimming in the river."

"I won't. You have a nice weekend."

She walked to the Bronco behind me. I watched the river and logs some more. Then I heard her say behind me, "F* you!"

I turned and she said, "No, no, not you. Him!" She then walked back down to the river, waded back out to the railing, climbed up on it, and sat.

I left.

After I got home I went out to check the pocket gopher traps as I hadn't checked them for several days now. Got four more. As I checked the traps and reset them low slow rumbles of thunder rolled across the sky to the west from the dark blue clouds. One of my favorite sounds. The air was still and humid. As I walked back home it started to rain lightly. The rain was a little cool but felt good on a warm day.

Oh yeah, my river definitely has risen since I last saw it a few days ago!