Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Floodlands

From West Memphis to the New Bridge, I-40 runs about twenty feet off the ground. Just after I-40 leaves West Memphis, it crosses the levee that keeps the Mississippi River from flooding northeastern Arkansas all the way back to Crowley's Ridge during the spring flood. I suppose they built that stretch of road elevated so that it would still be usable when the floods did come. And it jumps up higher - thirty to fifty feet, maybe - to go over the railroad tracks that crisscross the fields between West Memphis and the river.

And the river doesn't flood every year. Some years the fields from the levee to the river's edge stay dry and unflooded. Not this year, though. This year the flood is deep and spectacular and makes it feel like (as Sonya said last week) you're driving over I-10 leaving New Orleans and heading east: swamps and trees and water everywhere.

John was impressed by the flood. We went to meet Sonya at El Porton (yes, that El Porton; yes, she showed us to our table) on Thurdsay night and John was blown away by all the water.

"No way!" he yelled from the back seat, "how did this happen? No way! Where did this flood come from?"

So I say all that to say this: It was rainy and cool this morning. A creepy, horror movie-ish fog was hanging against the water that had flooded the fields. The fog was thick and white and very, very Silent Hill. And then! As I came over the last rise over the railroad, where the interstate flattens out before rising again to meet the New Bridge, I got to see the whole vista. Two or three miles of fog, punctured here and there by skeletal trees, and then rising up out of the fog like some post-apocalyptic trading post: Memphis.

It was fucking awesome. I wish I'd had a camera. And a place to stop the car.

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