The Storm

matched the speed of the debris and stayed with the floating junkyard being propelled downstream.

A sudden feeling of the boat slowing down came across me, and Henry called out, “She’s openin g up and getting wider. Never been this far inland. Look!” Ahead of us was a lake as far as the eye could see. The lake extended left, right, ahead, and to the horizon. Water! Tons of it! “Good Lord, Boy, look at that!” Henry exclaimed, “Never seen anything like it!” For Henry to be impressed, it had to be something, and it was. It was like looking across a muddy Lake Michigan as the flood water rushed out into the vast opening, slowing down to a snail’s pace. Floating piles of debris littered the watery landscape. They all appeared as floating junkyard islands and were being continually added to by the incoming flood debris. Sections of rooftops, boards, fencing, cars, old canoes, and boats, not unlike the one we were in. Amassive floating salvage yard, each piece with a story. No bodies, other than some bloated cows that had been lodged into the smorgasbord of trash. “No bodies, please no bodies,” I said under my breath. Henry skillfully piloted the boat around the trash piles like the boatman crossing th e River Styx in Dante’s Inferno. I really did not want to examine the piles too closely, but I had to get my story. Each piece of garbage and debris told a tale. A doll and a doghouse with parts of doors and roof material. Clothing and household articles in abundance. "Where were these from? How far did they come? What was their story," I wondered. I took pictures. Hundreds of them. As Henry motored around the piles my mind went to the approach that I would take to this event. I searched in vain for some kind of

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