The hard rain had stopped, at least for a while. Reedy River was flooding the forest at the park. I had never seen that. As I got in my car, camera at my side, I mostly just wanted to take a look, to see what I could see from the middle of the pedestrian bridge, high over those flooding waters. At least, I hoped it was high over those flooding waters.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I pulled off Mauldin Road and onto the park access road. The asphalt was covered with fast-running water but none of it seemed puddled up with any depth, and so I cautiously drove to the parking lot nearest the trailhead that led to the bridge.
It drizzled a little on the way over and I knew my camera could not handle a lot of water. I stuck my compact umbrella into my back pocket. I put my hiking hat on my head. My jacket was water repellent. If I got caught in the rain and covered up my camera, the most that would happen would be that I would get soaked. I've slept in the rain before, years ago out in the boonies of Vietnam, so getting a little soaked, but within driving distance of my home, did not seem all that big of a deal, worth taking the chance.
The sky was heavy with clouds: gray clouds above, dark skies to the north, upstream from where I stood in the parking lot. What I did not know and could not see was the heavy rain bursting from those ominous clouds, high in the windy north sky.
The wooden slats on the bridge felt slippery. It took me a while to get to the half-way point. With arms out for balance, camera dangling by its strap, my eyes watched every step on those slats. Each cautious movement I made felt dangerous. The side railings of the bridge were high enough and thick enough that I had to stand near them, look over and down, to get a good view of the water.
Wow!
The water had probably gone down a bit by the time I got there, but the forest was still flooded downstream. The river was starting to look like a lake. My curiosity was high. I wanted to get a closer look at the flooding in the forest. The bridge was naturally on high ground. I could take one of the trails and go probably a half mile before getting to the flooded part.
The dirt part of the trail was mucky and slow going. Within 15 or 20 minutes, I had gone as far as I could, toes of my boots touching water deeper than I wanted to tread. This photo is what I saw. What looks like a slow-moving creek in front of a bench (the busted bench I wrote about earlier) is just the dirt trail underwater. And off to the right out in the fog is where the beaver ponds and the old lookout platform was, before they tore it down to rebuild it on higher supports. On any other day you can just about see the platform from that bench. On that day I could not see it because of the fog. What I did not know until several days later was that, during the flooding, the platform was completely underwater, meaning the ground where I stood had also been underwater.
The front edge of my boots still in the water, having gotten the photo I wanted, I decided to head back up the trail and try to find another spot where I could see more flooding in the forest. But before I could make a move, my phone started sounding an alarm. I didn't even know my phone had that function. But it was loud and clear: flood alert. In the next moment it started raining. Suddenly that half mile to my car seemed a lot longer distance. The flood alert meant that a dangerous amount of upstream water was headed my way. Right at that moment I was in an area that was low enough to be flooded.
I had to get out of there. In a hurry.
My bouts of anxiety and my imaginative mind sometimes makes things seem worse than they are. But that knowledge never seems to be around when I need it most.
I swung my camera around to my left side and slipped it under my jacket, zipping it up as tightly as I could. The rain was coming down hard by now. I tried to open my little umbrella, but it wouldn't open. It slipped from my hands and dropped into the water. I almost left it there.
I was already pretty soaked, and I hadn't moved more than a few feet. I felt oddly tired. I knew that I was not in shape to run for a half mile, not without chancing a heart attack. So I set out walking, long careful strides, muck pulling at my boots with every step.
My anxiety was rising.
In a few minutes I was winded and stopped to rest, bending over to catch my breath. My boots and pants were heavy; my big-rimed hat lost its shape and hung down over my eyes. The river was close by, making a lot more noise than it did when I was standing on the bridge earlier. I expected water to crest the banks and surge my way at any moment.
It suddenly dawned on me that the bridge might be in danger of collapsing from the pressure of the flooding waters, leaving me stranded, soaked, and in serious trouble.
I pushed on.
My feet were starting to hurt, both of them. I have peripheral neuropathy, bunions, spurs, and plantar fasciitis in both feet. The neuropathy is the only thing that's constant; the other stuff comes and goes, often requiring me to need a cane, sometimes two canes, to get around, even in the house. Didn't have a cane with me. Still had a way to go. Now I was limping, and soaked to the bone, and out of breath, heart racing. The river was flooding, and I was on the wrong side of it.
Thank God! The bridge was still there.
The water was higher and running faster but not as bad as I had imagined. At that point, the water was not high enough to even reach the bridge supports, so the bridge was not in danger of collapsing. I slowed to a normal pace. The rain had stopped. I hadn't even noticed. I made it across the bridge, up the hill to my car, wiped my camera dry, threw a blanket from the trunk across my seat, and drove home ... where I immediately took a warm shower, followed by a long nap.