The blockade officer let Leah through to the site. “Watch yourself. They opened the gates up in Estes Park an hour ago.” Leah felt panic rising, felt her shoulders lift, her belly tense. The river was cresting its banks, a churning, relentless press.

She couldn't get eyes on the osprey as she drove in, but there in the parking lot was Elmer Jackson's truck. She looked again at the river and deflated, hopeless. She took a minute to orient herself, squinting into the sheets of rain. She wanted to get eyes on Elmer, ask him what he thought he was doing out here all by himself, ask him why he thought it would make any difference at all. Was there any amount of effort, attention, love, that could protect a project, a human, a life from something like this?

She heard a shout then, turned to the south, caught what looked like a pitchfork spinning end over end before it dropped back behind the wall of pigweed and miner's candle that stood between her and the line of irrigation ditches. She clambered through the mud and weeds to see Elmer twisted awkwardly on top of the trash rack on the culvert that ran under the muddy road, his legs caught in different openings, his feet dangling just over the churn of high water.

“Jesus, Elmer,” she said, rushing toward him, “you all right?”

“Hell no, I'm not all right,” he said, gasping with effort and pain. He shook his head slowly. “Stupid.”

Leah couldn't tell whether Elmer thought she was stupid for asking or if he was stupid for falling in.

The ground at the top of the culvert was sloped and uneven. On both sides of the grate were tall piles of decomposing moss that had invaded the ditch since the nitrogen bloom of July. Today's moss slumped on top of the pile, an almost neon green slime.

“Careful now,” Elmer said. “The plants are wet and there's the mud. It's awful slippery, which is how I ended up here.”

Leah crouched, grabbing at the top of the grate. She felt stable, well rooted in the situation. “You in good enough shape to climb out of there if I get you my hand?” she asked. “I don't know about all this mud.” And the water, she thought, the water is rising fast.

“Think so.” Elmer winced and blew his breath out, hard, as he stretched his hand toward hers. She planted her feet and prayed the mud wouldn't give way beneath her. She held his hand in both of hers and slowly, carefully planting each foot, started pushing herself backward, up the hill.

“Hold up hold up,” Elmer said, and she froze, taut, while he wrestled first his right leg, then his left, out of the grate. “Think this left leg of mine is broken. Or close to it.”