The following is an excerpt from my memoir, “Pedestal House:”
It rained with no let-up for nine days and 10 nights straight. It didn’t rain lightly, but came in unending torrents. It beat against our windows and trailed in streams off our eaves and decks to form erosive channels on the hillside that led to wider tributaries. With wind driving rain uphill, we were drenched from above and below. The one thing it did do was rain continuously, all day, all night, hour-to-hour, moment-to-moment, for nine long days.
During the first three days, the ground became saturated and Malibu Creek began its heavy flow rumbling toward the ocean. On the third day, sediment-laden water curled in dirty brown hoops a quarter-mile off shore. The ocean looked invaded, worried and unhappy. During sleep on the sixth night my wife and I awoke, disconcerted, when a throaty roar arose from Malibu Creek. Huge boulders around four feet in diameter were clacking and grunting, moving downstream and flooding the estuary. The sandy strip separating the lagoon from the ocean had long been broken and a wide, dirty stream of river water had forced its way through the barrier invading the once-perfect sea.
After nine days, the Pineapple Express dissipated and a welcome sun came out. While inspecting Malibu Creek Bridge one day, I spotted seven or eight huge Sycamore trees, 60 to 90 feet long, distributed randomly in the lagoon. Uprooted by the rainstorm, they were two to three feet in diameter and had slid into Malibu Creek where they were carried downstream to an arbitrary fate. They lay stiff and dead in the raging creek and widened lagoon with water swirling and pooling around extended branches where a few dying leaves occasionally fluttered. For years, the flattened tree trunks remained stuck in the gravely bottom and eventually became bald. Adventurous young swimmers climbed over them and rode them like horses. Later, rainwater sank deep into the ground and loosened earth that crumbled. I’d known fires. Now, I knew rain. Soon I’d know slides.
Doug Rucker