The water is running fast, sounds of stealth and cold in consonance, punctuated by the creaking and snapping of whole trees by the larger chunks of ice; dark night, not really seen, although I reflexively turn toward the sound. I don’t know where my vantage point is, it’s only a little above the water which isn’t a place I could’ve possibly been. I can sometimes feel and hear it just before I’m awakened in the night by it, even though over 15 years has passed.

Like many, I suppose, the floodwalls and dikes seemed like a welcome separation from the river and the memories of the event- I’d never have to look at it again, save to cross the bridge to Minnesota. Everything is pre- or post-, lost homes, relationships, jobs. It’d all be buried and suppressed. I could never bring myself to watch the old videos of the newscasts from that day and the days that followed, although I’d been to a photography exhibit at the art museum which proved to be emotionally troubling for some time to follow. I couldn’t leave, I couldn’t stay.

I don’t know if it was time that healed this nearly mortal wound in a major artery of a city, but when I cross the floodwall now, I see miles and miles of parks- not the threat and destruction of the past. I know the places where the trees line up in a straight line along now gone streets or the playground where my kids used to play. Now I cross-country ski or bike here, the occasional reminder from an old driveway entrance, sidewalk fragment, or oddly placed still-functioning streetlight bringing back the neighborhood now strangely separated from the city. The Red rolls on. And so do I.