Lately we've been getting thunderstorms and wet weather, way more than we think we need. As sometimes happens in the spring season, the rains just keep coming and coming, and the streams rise higher and higher and wider and wider. I've had to back off from making a joke of having the Big Sugar Golf Course on Little Sugar Creek. What we've seen recently from Little Sugar Creek was not little. It was really flexing its muscles and saying, "I'm a BIG creek now!"
Likewise, our Otter Creek, north of Pea Ridge, which can be such a nice, quiet, trickling little creek, such that you can jump across the stream in many places, or easily wade across, has recently been a raging torrent, carrying fully grown trees in it's swollen waters, taking out fences, overflowing crossings, and threatening to wash out roads. All my life we have needed to keep an eye on the creek on our farm during rainy weather. Sometimes the waters could rise quickly and if we weren't watchful we might end up stranded on the wrong side of an impassable stream. Rising waters might happen to us even if the rain was not particularly strong right where we were. If rains were heavy in Pea Ridge and on the farms east of town, Otter Creek could rise quickly.
Like rain itself, we could hardly do without our little Otter Creek on the farm. It was the main source of water for our livestock. When we had to do without its waters, as sometimes happened in the dry summer seasons of July and August, we had to go into emergency mode, devising ways to haul water from the spring north of us. Water is so absolutely essential for life to go on. Rains are necessary and often welcomed with celebration and thankfulness. Springs and streams are part of the sustenance of life. But then there can be too much of the good thing, too much rain, and the resulting high waters and overflowing streams can be life threatening and destructive to property.
The combination of rains and winds often plays havoc with the trees in our neighborhoods. I was amazed today to see the numerous lawns with trees down or branches and sticks littering the yards. I heard the rains during the night, but I must have slept through the winds that came with them. When the weather is stormy, I am always reminded of the night of the Brightwater tornado in 1947, when I was still a small boy. Although we lived 10 miles away from the little town of Brightwater, we sensed through the night that this was a very unusual storm. It was more than just your passing thunderstorm. The rain was heavy and constant through much of the night, the sky was light with continuously flashing lightning, thunder rolled without letup. So we were not really surprised when morning came and we began hearing that Brightwater had been blown away during the night.
I think waterflows have always played a great part in the shaping of the land and country on which we live. Our area is blessed by abundant water sources, springs, streams, underground lakes, and so on. The waterflows over thousands of years have shaped our hills and valleys and stream beds. Waterflows coming off the Pea Ridge plateau over long periods have resulted in beautiful valleys like the Little Sugar Creek Valley, Otter Creek Valley and Big Sugar Creek setting across nearby southwest Missouri. Now we have come to depend greatly on Beaver Lake as a source of water for much of northwest Arkansas. We could hardly have the Pea Ridge we have today, or Rogers or Bentonville or Springdale, without the great Beaver Lake. But we still have to have the Otter Creek and Sugar Creek and Spanker Creek to have a place for our waters to go after they leave our neighborhoods in town. It is fascinating to me how things which are such necessities and such blessings to us can become threats to us if we get them in too great abundance.
One of the inconveniences that often accompanies our rain storms is our electrical outages. During one of the stormy evenings a few weeks ago I was trying to watch some television, and the power kept failing with just momentary outages. They lasted only seconds, but it was enough to cause our converter box (DVR) to have to reboot several times. Its message comes on, saying, "Powering Up! This may take a few minutes!" Sure enough, the thing has to think and load and organize itself for five minutes while we patiently wait on it. Not!
How impatient we can get with the rains that are necessary for the growing things, the farms and gardens and livestock, on which we depend for the sustenance of life.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 05/24/2017