768 Ashokan; Trees Down

Thursday, June 29, 2006

I went to the Ashokan Reservoir this evening to see what the rain has done. There's the spillway, where excess water spills over and resumes being a creek. A little further down, the creek passes through a narrow rock gorge, and there's a pretty little falls you can see from the bridge over the creek.

In all the years I've been visiting the reservoir, I have never seen it like it was this evening. The gorge was especially amazing- the entire cleft was full of water, and it was shooting water straight up in the air everywhere it was hitting rocks underneath, places where ordinarily it changes direction, weaving back and forth. There were thousands of swallows wheeling in the air over the water.

I'm going back tomorrow, and tomorrow I won't forget the camera. Pictures will be posted sometime.

It started raining while I was at Ashokan. By the time I got near Kingston, it was raining so hard I decided to take refuge in a diner and have a sandwich, until it stopped. As I was driving on home, I could see a lot of lightening in the direction of home. Big sky to ground bolts, about one every five seconds. Stuff was getting hit.

When I got to the village, I found out what was getting hit. The post office has two beautifully-shaped trees in front. Not big, maybe 20 feet, but spreading. The trunks go up maybe 10 feet and then divide into many spreading branches that are covered in flowers at the end of the branches in mid-summer, and bright yellow-pink leaves in fall. I always wanted to find out what they are, so I could get one for my front yard.

Both trees are now all over the road, getting cut up with chain saws. Sad. I could see men directing traffic around something in the road, and I rolled down the window, and when I got close enough to see what they were cutting up I shouted "Oh, no!" so loud I startled the flagman.

It didn't look like wind damage exactly. The "outside" branches on each tree are ok, but the upwardly spreading branches look like they got split open, like they exploded. They look like pieces of shattered toothpick sticking up. The whole center of each tree, except for the toothpicks, is gone. You see that with lightening damage. I guess I'll find out tomorrow.

Because my street is high, we often get the worst of the wind. There were small and medium sized branches all over the street, and one major tree down, at the house before mine, that I had to inch around. It was too dark to say for sure, but it sorta looks like I may have lost two more trees in the woods. I haven't been able to check the back yard yet.

This is all very weird.