Indigenous Ability

I compose these brief notes while the unfortunateness of Florence takes aim at the East Coast. I offer it in the hopes that we may have it at the fingertips of our minds for as Seneca reminds us “ What has befallen one man may happen to all ” or as the Boy Scouts would say “ Be Prepared .”           The following ideas are gleaned from naturalist studies in river-dynamics, the frontier scout tradition, and an American Indian tactic or two. Keep in mind when we discuss river-fluid mechanics these same mechanics will hold for “concrete rivers,” that is, streets turned to river by flood. Rivers basically have two broad aspects to their composition Upland & Lowland. In the Upland portion the land is steeper and we find more energetic water. In the Lowland phase, it flattens out and at times we may see only a yard drop in elevation in a ½ mile of travel. The idea to keep in mind is that the faster or more energetic the flow the close...