But Please, People

My husband and I lived through what was the 100-year-but-eventually-called-the-500-year flood of Grand Forks, North Dakota. While it unfolded, we  debated endlessly with each other, “What was the most accurate prognostication for the steadily rising Red River?” Who knew what was most true? The spokesman from the National Guard who instructed us to fill sandbags at the Guard’s emergency center even as he assured us the river was unlikely to spill over the wall of khaki sacks of sand? The mayor of Grand Forks who swore there was little chance we would see flooding as bad as what the City knew in the 1970’s? Our neighbors who’d lived through the ‘70’s flood and who were increasingly unsure Grand Forks was going to dodge the bullet this time? My husband and I were relative newcomers to Grand Forks, having lived there just four years. We were unsure whose word we could trust.

In the end, we didn’t have to trust anyone’s word. The Red River taught us when to evacuate. One sunny but freezing April morning in 1997, as we returned from the University of North Dakota where we’d been moving low-lying books and papers onto top shelves and desktops—in spite of assurances from the University that this was not necessary—we drove into our neighborhood and saw, in the middle of the street, a geyser of water shooting thirty feet into the air, a surreal site that lifted my foot right off the gas pedal. As I made a slow turn down a side street to avoid the water cascading before us, we saw another fountain and then another. The Red River had inundated the water treatment plant located on its banks. What we were seeing was the Red River coursing through the city sewers with enough power to blow manhole covers into the air—sometimes fifty feet, we learned later. The river needed more room than the space between its banks. It needed more room than even the city sewers could provide. So it spit out the manhole covers and shot onto the streets of Grand Forks.

Seeing the geysers, my husband and I didn’t have to debate any longer. The time to evacuate had arrived. We didn’t need the National Guard or the mayor to instruct us. We simply grabbed the evacuation bags sitting by the back door, turned off the water, the electricity and the gas, loaded the dogs into the car, and joined the long line of evacuees crawling out of the city. All of us knew it was time to head for the escarpment that lay about an hour northwest of town.

If we had yielded to the sense of foreboding we felt as we learned of towns downstream that were flooding, as we saw the local newspaper inexorably revise its flood stage estimates ever upward, we could have avoided the loss of so much that we left behind in our basement and, for some of us, on our first floors. But we wanted to trust that those in charge were right when they insisted our street had never flooded and therefore would not flood this time. We placed our trust in those who claimed to be our leaders. That, as it turned out, was the riskiest choice we made during the flood. We should have acted on the best information we had and taken care of ourselves as best we knew how. Our biggest mistake was in thinking that there existed social systems ‘out there’ that would watch out for our interests as fiercely as we could ourselves.

As I wade through contending accounts of present dire circumstances—whether I’m reading about climate change, hydraulic fracturing, peak oil or worldwide economic problems—I feel as if I’m back in those days just before the Grand Forks manhole covers blew. I know the weather in central Illinois has drastically changed. My pocketbook feels how the cost of filling up my gas tank has tripled. I see with dread how similar the real estate bubble and the natural gas bubble are, even as I read that even the supposedly liberal president I helped to elect is touting fracking as part of the solution to our energy woes. My breath stops for a moment when I consider how all us Baby Boomers are going to grow old at the same time and how our aging and ailing generation is going to put an incredible burden on succeeding generations. These are not good times. The only problem is that these are circumstances from which I cannot evacuate. None of us can. If the current times were a flood, my husband and I would have to survive the river’s fury from the roof our house while hoping the home’s foundation would hold.

The funny thing about the Grand Forks flood is that it has made me skeptical to the core. I may still look for someone whose point of view is the most reliable. I still catch myself trying to decide whose opinion to trust. But when I’m taking care of practical things—putting dishes away, folding the laundry, getting a meal ready for our family—I know that whatever is coming is going to require that I do the very best I can with the limited information I have. And that information is telling me that we are headed for a heap of trouble.

How nice it would be if an economic theory existed complex enough to contend with the manmade circumstances that threaten the planet and everything living upon it—including us. I might actually cry if a political leader was brave and effective enough to fight for a wise course of action—whether or not it meant he or she would be reelected. I would become downright giddy if a majority of U.S. citizens abandoned the notion that business as it currently exists was capable of doing anything other than pursuing another dollar to put on its ledgers. Or that even one news source was actually capable of weighing all information to arrive at a truly excellent analysis of a problem free of bias. But I’m not waiting for any of those miracles to happen. In fact, when I wait for such positive events, I actually increase the severity of what we face. As I wait for someone ‘out there’ to make all these problems less cataclysmic, I continue to live my life in about the same way. Business as usual isn’t just for business anymore.  Business as usual is what we all choose when we wait for someone ‘out there’ to fix the problems that we face. When hope is what we choose instead of acting on the best information we have, then our hopeful waiting becomes as much of a problem as the dire circumstances before us.

These days there are too many blown manhole covers littering our streets, too many spewing geysers. And yet many of us continue to live our lives as if we do not see the rising water. I guess the question becomes how high does the floodwater have to get before we do what is necessary to work the problem?

In 1997 my husband and I escaped the rising Red River, and lived as evacuees for two weeks while we worried if our house was still standing. When we drove back into town—before the return of the National Guard, local police, health care providers or electric power—a handful of us on our street helped each other to gut our basements, worked together to get power back into our homes, shared our food and our bandages, and pumped out our basements. Eventually, representatives of various social structures returned to the city, but by that time many of us had been hard at work for two weeks or more. We took care of ourselves and we took care of each other. We didn’t wait for those in authority to tell us what to do. We just did the best we could.

That’s what we need to do now: take stock of what is unfolding and make the best choices we know how. The longer we wait for those in power or authority to provide solutions for what we face, the more difficult our work is going to be.

My husband and I learned a powerful lesson in Grand Forks. The power of our country lies not in its military, or its government, or its business or wealth. The power of this country rests with its people and their ability to work hard and care for each other. I know we would all like for someone to tell us what is best to do, but please, people, sometimes there just isn’t anyone out there with an answer. What do you think is best to do? If ideas occur to you as you read that question, trust your gut and get moving. We will not all agree, but we will have a plethora of ideas to explore—sometimes contending, that is true—but LOTS of ideas to bring to the problems we face. That reality will be much better than the polarized ideas that currently keep our decision-makers in a blinking contest with no end in sight. Let them keep staring at each other. We just need to get busy with our own ideas. Those busy staring and snarling will catch on eventually.