When a drought turns to flood, you change. The saturated landscape forces adjustments on you. This may seem like a small thing, but pushing you out of your repeat-behavior zone leads to bigger positive adjustments in your life.
In North Texas, where we live, a drought strangled the area the past five years. Our home is just off Lake Grapevine, and we’ve watched the levels steadily drop year after year after year. “I’ve never seen the lake levels this low” was the local mantra, one repeated frequently during dog walks with neighbors or bumping into others on the bike/jogging path.
Watering levels for yards were restricted near the beginning of the five-year dearth of rain, and further tightened down in the last year. As you looked at the sky, your prayers frequently centered on seeking guidance on how to bring a long, steady, consistent, saturating rain.
Getting a five minute rain shower became a good thing. Twenty minutes of moisture falling became an anomaly. Anything longer than that was unheard of during that five-year period.
During that time, like most humans, I developed patterns that adapted to the environment. Where I biked and ran in the morning was wide open because more and more land became exposed as the drought continued.
In two weeks, that busted. So much rain fell in the past two weeks that every area lake has not only filled to capacity, but gone over their banks and started covering vegetation typically never lapping their shores.
A week ago, you couldn’t hike where you had the week before. This week, you can’t hike where you did last week. Who knows what next week will bring? The weather forces you to change behavior.
It also exposes you to new things. Recently, for example, my morning bike trek took me down the paved path on my normal route. Suddenly, I hit a low spot where the lake had come up and covered the asphalt in enough water to force me to slow down and consider what to do next.
At that moment, a large fish decided to jump. “Hmmm,” this made me think, “if you were a fisherman, you could now toss your line in the middle of the woods and catch something.”
This week, with the water rising, further adaptation was required, as the path at that spot was no longer passable. This meant biking back to the main road, and heading through some neighborhoods to stay out of traffic.
I biked through our local park, checking out improvements made over the past two years (since my last visit). Changing the routine this way sent me pedaling deeper towards the lake park, marveling at the number of houses I never knew existed.
Emerging from the houses, I rode down to where the water pushed into the parking lots for the soccer fields. A coyote prowled off to the left. Further on, I startled a beaver. It flopped into the water right in front of me, where the lake shore had merged into the bushes near the bike path.
Whether it’s a new place for the fisherman to drop a line, observing nature, or prowling your local streets to discover different neighborhoods and parks, I was confronted by something new on all fronts. I thought about encroaching habitats, how we exercise, taking up fishing, walking down to the park to play basketball, recommending a house to a friend that I saw for sale.
All those thoughts occurred because we moved from drought to flood. Sometimes it just takes a lot of rain to get you thinking new things.
In North Texas, where we live, a drought strangled the area the past five years. Our home is just off Lake Grapevine, and we’ve watched the levels steadily drop year after year after year. “I’ve never seen the lake levels this low” was the local mantra, one repeated frequently during dog walks with neighbors or bumping into others on the bike/jogging path.
Watering levels for yards were restricted near the beginning of the five-year dearth of rain, and further tightened down in the last year. As you looked at the sky, your prayers frequently centered on seeking guidance on how to bring a long, steady, consistent, saturating rain.
Getting a five minute rain shower became a good thing. Twenty minutes of moisture falling became an anomaly. Anything longer than that was unheard of during that five-year period.
During that time, like most humans, I developed patterns that adapted to the environment. Where I biked and ran in the morning was wide open because more and more land became exposed as the drought continued.
In two weeks, that busted. So much rain fell in the past two weeks that every area lake has not only filled to capacity, but gone over their banks and started covering vegetation typically never lapping their shores.
A week ago, you couldn’t hike where you had the week before. This week, you can’t hike where you did last week. Who knows what next week will bring? The weather forces you to change behavior.
It also exposes you to new things. Recently, for example, my morning bike trek took me down the paved path on my normal route. Suddenly, I hit a low spot where the lake had come up and covered the asphalt in enough water to force me to slow down and consider what to do next.
At that moment, a large fish decided to jump. “Hmmm,” this made me think, “if you were a fisherman, you could now toss your line in the middle of the woods and catch something.”
This week, with the water rising, further adaptation was required, as the path at that spot was no longer passable. This meant biking back to the main road, and heading through some neighborhoods to stay out of traffic.
I biked through our local park, checking out improvements made over the past two years (since my last visit). Changing the routine this way sent me pedaling deeper towards the lake park, marveling at the number of houses I never knew existed.
Emerging from the houses, I rode down to where the water pushed into the parking lots for the soccer fields. A coyote prowled off to the left. Further on, I startled a beaver. It flopped into the water right in front of me, where the lake shore had merged into the bushes near the bike path.
Whether it’s a new place for the fisherman to drop a line, observing nature, or prowling your local streets to discover different neighborhoods and parks, I was confronted by something new on all fronts. I thought about encroaching habitats, how we exercise, taking up fishing, walking down to the park to play basketball, recommending a house to a friend that I saw for sale.
All those thoughts occurred because we moved from drought to flood. Sometimes it just takes a lot of rain to get you thinking new things.