Recently, a woman came who was taking photos and collecting comments for a book on this town of Wimberley. She took some pictures and asked if we would write a few words or a paragraph on what we like about living here. I planned to write on the big cypress trees along the Blanco River. On the morning of May 25, they were almost no more.
The flood made the front page of the New York Times. One hundred or more houses were destroyed or completely washed away. Maybe fifteen hundred were damaged. More than a dozen people died. The stories of near escapes are chilling and so numerous that it is a wonder more people were not drowned. Most of the big cypress trees went down or lost their bark — thousands of them, some over five hundred years old.
John Michael who works with us was able to make two trips to the car with chosen items before he had to get away and leave his cabin to flood.
We’ve had floods before. They are a regular occurrence. Sometimes a few houses get water in them. But this one put four feet of water in houses that one would say were on the bluff — and took out the trees.
There is a lot of wood along the riverbank, some of it useable. But because there are few living trees along the river now, the downed trees are the bulwark against erosion and can be nurseries for new trees. Without woody plants along the river to hold the soil, normal floods will scour the soil from the banks and eliminate the possibility of a cool, shady river for those coming after.
We have been working on the effort to preserve and restore the riverbank. Will has skillfully managed a Facebook page: Blanco River Restoration Project. In the first 24 hours, this site had been viewed 40,000 times. There is a lot of interest in this cool, clear River.
Another good thing about this town is the people and their willingness to volunteer and help. The morning after the flood, many hands went to work cleaning up and salvaging. Gary Weeks and Company are today back to work, mostly.
Post script: Fall, 2016. Two of our porch rockers were recovered from brush piles--intact.
