In High Waters & Broken Roads, Temporarily Put Up.

A stranger tells me about her flood experience. She and her grown son had been camping beside a lake when the water began to rise. Unable to drive south to the town where they lived, they drove north to high ground and slept in their car in Craftsbury Common. The next morning, seeking road intel, they walked over to Sterling College. The college staff offered them breakfast. The roads had been damaged all around the town, and no one was getting in or out. The college put the family up for three nights in empty staff housing and offering gratis meals in the dining hall. “The food,” the woman told me, “was so good. Everything fresh from their farm.”

In the scheme of things — a problem: two people, marooned, sleeping in their car. The solution: empty rooms, plenty of food. Practicality and kindness.

…. And in this end-of-summer rainy-but-possibly-to-clear morning, a few favored lines from E. B. White:

“The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into autumn – the crickets spread the rumour of sadness and change.” 

— E. B. White