River Run

I had never seen anything like it.

But, then again, I had only been on the job a year.

The rains of the Mungabo delta come hard and strong, often overnight. We had set up camp above the flash flood line and assumed we were safe for the night. My partner, Gabriella “Gabby” Demerchant, and I set up camp, making sure to tie down everything we could, then positioned our equipment and began taking measurements of the river basin.

“I just heard over the radio that there’s a flash flood warning for tomorrow. Could be an interesting day.”

We arose early the next morning, and after a quick bite to eat, we set to the task ahead. Our first step was to make detailed maps of the delta. We trekked up to the bottleneck point, and set about taking depth and turbidity measurements. As part of our services we normally provide our clients with detailed maps of their project site. Where we were working for a national government, this meant very precise maps, so our data point had to be exact, or rather more exact than normal.

Most of the way up to our first survey location we encountered our first rainfall. It was a soaking rain that made it hard to push upstream too fast. Our canoe started filling with water, and it wasn’t long before we were riding with our gunnels at the water line. It was hard paddling, and more than once I thought about giving up. But, then again, I couldn’t let Gabby show me up.

We were setting up at the bottle neck when we first heard the rumble. This is not an unusual scenario for us, and we were prepared for almost anything. Our equipment has been retrofitted to float in cases like this, and we often find ourselves spending multiple days fishing dry-boxes out of commercial ports., We strapped ourselves in to a couple of nearby trees in the event the surge was too powerful to stand in. We hunkered down, knowing we weren’t getting out of this one easily.

“I’ll see you on the other side of this!”

“Just hold on to something,” she retorted, “I don’t want to have to break in a new guy in a place like this!”

The advancing wave first came as a heavy mist, with roaring louder than either of us had heard before. Before we had a chance to register what was going on, we were under a wall of water that filled the flood-plain and beyond. We knew that our equipment, both here and at base camp would soon be under water, but given the preparations we had made, the worst loss would be the small pup tents we had set up, one for each of us and one for food storage.

The advancing wall hit like a freight train. Before we had time to react, our worlds were instantaneously immersed in crushing pressure. My ears filled with the crush of swooshing sounds as my ear drums imploded. I wretched, emptying the contents of my stomach and watched as it was swept away, even before I knew what was happening to me.

My world had changed before I could register what was going on.

Finding ourselves quite a bit under the waterline, we slowly made our way up our respective trees, making sure to stay in the wake zone so as not to be yanked off, or worse, pinned to the trunks and unable to surface. Climbing was made all the more difficult due to having to fight being torn from the tree trunk like burdock from a wool jacket. By the time I surfaced, Gabby had already found a perching spot.

“Hey kiddo! You made it!”

“Yea, no thanks to you, I might add!”

“You’re the one who signed up for field work.”

“Ah! I live for the thrill! Have you ever seen anything like this before, though?”

“Not quite. Worse I’ve ever seen was about five feet, with a leading wall of about seven.”

“There must be about eight or nine feet of rise here, and no telling how big that wall was. I guess this would be why they want us to look at how a dam might affect the area?”

“Well. As much as we might like to think we’re here for our good looks, we do what we do for a reason.”

“What now? We can’t exactly go back to measurements, at least for a little while.”

“No, I guess not!”

We rode out the surge in the tree tops, but we did not have to wait long before the water started receding. Within an hour, things had settled enough for us to climb down into waist deep water. Problem was, the surface wasn’t dropping any more. We were stranded, and any movement into deeper waters now could wash us down stream.

Luckily, once in the delta, surges tend to loose their force. The water remained high, but the edges were safe to travel.

With the rest of the day a bust, we did what came naturally to people in our profession and decided to enjoy the rest of the day, exploring the shallows and turning an otherwise unwelcome situation into a gift from God and Mother Nature. We dug our cameras out of our dry-sacs and began to document our adventure, and the natural beauty of the world around us.

“It’s Beautiful!”

“Amazing!” I remarked.

We took so many pictures that day we filled multiple data cards each. We continued snapping for what seemed to be hours, striving to get it all captured on film for the guys back in Boston to see.

We must have been a sight to see, the both of us out there, soaked to the bone, umbrellas out in a futile attempt to keep our cameras dry. But hey, we made it, and some times that’s all that counts.