A light-gray silt film covering the dense, green, wild-rosebush border showed the water line from Sunday’s flash flood that inundated Sunken Meadow. It was head-high, maybe even a little over six feet, and had deposited a significant layer of what looked like clay throughout the Christmas tree farm, the blanket deepest in the depressions, where I sunk almost to my ankles Tuesday, covering my Keen sandals with fine gray mud. I was there to walk the dogs and assess the damage two days after observing the flooded meadow from its elevated western lip. Even the dogs recognized the difference, seemed extra curious. You could read it in their gait and demeanor.

One symbolic discovery told me how severe the flood had been. Following the riverbank wood line back to my truck, I noticed little Chubby, four months old, sniffing at something on the two-tire farm road with grass in the middle. When he picked it up and ran, head high and proud, I could see it was a fish, maybe a foot long. Upon closer inspection, it was a plump rainbow trout. Yeah, I know, a hatchery trout released this spring. Not “wild.” But, still, if fish died, it had to be serious. The two Great Blue Herons we flushed from the periphery must have been cleaning up other dead or stranded fish in the narrow wetland puddles along the back side.

My wife and I had taken a ride down there out of curiosity Sunday around 5 p.m., after witnessing the extent of the flooding at the Green River Swimming and Recreation Area. I had seen the place under water before, but not that deep. The Butynskis living along the southern lip concurred. About my age and living there all their lives, they had never seen their lower meadow and the swimming pool across the street under so much water. Not even close. It wasn’t far from spilling over Colrain Road. Truthfully, I would have never suspected such nearby devastation while sitting at home reading Sunday, maybe a half-mile west of the Green River. My backyard brook was roaring. I could hear it and went out with an umbrella several times to observe. Even my dogs respected it, obviously wanted no part of it. The roar must have warned them to stay away. But the deeply-cut bed, which drains runoff from Patten Hill in Shelburne, would have needed to rise three or four additional feet to overflow its banks; amazing when you consider what happened to the Green River just a hop, skip and a jump away.

I guess most of the Christmas trees down in Sunken Meadow will be salvageable with a little work. The larger ones sustained more damage than the little ones planted over the past two years, which seemed to “weather the storm” just fine, minus some that were uprooted and flattened by deadfalls and other debris swept up from the river below. The taller trees were leaning south and had sustained some damage to branches on their upstream sides, but they’ll probably be OK once pruned and straightened.

When I returned home, I passed the “Road Closed” sign at the outflow of my driveway and headed for the Jersey barriers 200 yards up Brook Road to see what was happening on the other side. A Shelburne Highway Department crew put up the sign and barriers Saturday, before the tropical storm hit, presumably as a precautionary measure on a gorge road where all hell can break loose during heavy rainstorms. Curious to see if the heavy-duty repairs to some washed-out ravines from a few years back had held up through four to six inches of rain in less than 12 hours, I figured I’d take a little walk with the dogs. I love it when that road is closed and I can walk the dogs up it totally safe, no worries about traffic. People from Patten Hill, East Colrain and southern Vermont have a different opinion. When the curvy, brook-side road is closed, they wail at the inconvenience. If you don’t believe me, ask Shelburne selectmen. They’ve heard the cries every time they’ve suggested discontinuing the troublesome road to save money and labor. I walked about a half-mile to two bridges and found no damage other than a couple of small trees down in the road. Nothing serious. So, unless something let loose above where I walked to, the road closure is temporary. It was still closed Wednesday, reopening it not likely a priority with all the damage in downtown Buckland-Shelburne.

When I got back to my yard, greener than it’s ever been this time of year since I bought the place, I put Lily and Buddy in the kennel, brought Chubby around to the backyard alcove with me, fed him, sat down and finished “Ethan Allen: His Life and Times,” by Willard Stearne Randall while awaiting two loads of cordwood, primo, gray, dry oak. The biography ought to be required reading these days for anyone who believes that these Tea Party idiots making such a commotion resemble in any way the colonial radicals who fomented the American Revolution. The rebels who filled Boston Harbor with tea and plotted revolt were liberals and ardent democrats, not reactionary right-wingers protecting the status quo. The conservatives in those days were Tories, or loyalists, who supported the king and even took up arms alongside the British against the likes of Washington, Allen and the Revolutionary army. Had the latest health-care fiasco occurred in Ethan Allen’s day and been resolved as it was in favor of the larcenous insurance companies pilfering Americans daily, Allen would have ridden in with the Green Mountain Boys and ran them out of town on a rail, if they were lucky. Ethan Allen was a defender of the common man, no friend of the clergy, the royalty, the courts and corrupt politicians. Had he been alive a few years back, he likely would have ridden down Wall Street on a chestnut horse and ordered it burned to the ground, not bailed out the thieves so they could continue abusing the little guy. Allen had no love for New York schemers in the 18th century and would have had no change of heart today. Trust me.

I can say I’m proud to call Ethan Allen a cousin. We needed more like him back then, and desperately need a few good men like him now. But don’t hold your breath waiting. It ain’t happenin’. If you thought it was difficult to overthrow power in those days of sailing ships, flintlocks and tomahawks, try it against today’s frightening military force, which always protects those in charge.

I guess all we can do these days is shut up and accept it. Either that or pretend we don’t understand it.