After the flood

Found! Saved by a snarl of branches 50 feet from the river.

JIMINY SPRUCE ACRES -- We are back this weekend in search of the Lost Bench.
It is a small, simple wood-and-pipe bench that was constructed years ago by my father, who was always tinkering around with a project. He made one bench for each of his children, and this one wound up on the family land and was mentioned in a previous blog:

 My father purchased this land more than 30 years ago, with plans to build a modest home just above the river floodplain. It never got done, but we are not ready to abandon his dream. On Friday we took a wooden bench he built years ago and placed it on the sandy bank above the Trempealeau, a great perch from which to watch the river flow, read a good book and contemplate our small places in the universe.

Last month during the Great Flood of 2010 the usually peaceful Trempealeau River became a raging torrent that made national news by nearly swallowing the town of Arcadia 16 miles downstream and flooding everything in between.  Somewhere between here and there we hope to find the bench and haul it back home.  It's a longshot, which will make the recovery even more glorious.

UPDATE: The bench was located, miraculously upright in a thicket of branches, at 11:13 a.m. CDT.  Just before finding it we spotted a large whitetail buck with an impressive rack of antlers, making its way down Boy Scout Hill with a doe tailing closely, hoping to cross North River Road into JS Acres.  A glorious day indeed.