The grass surrounding it is completely flooded. There’s so much water that it’s lying on the surface because everything is already too wet for it to drain away, and more water is pulsing out with every second, spreading further. It’s nearly reached the first row of Balsam firs and is edging towards the Blue spruces.

My first instinct is to call Noel for help. He’ll know what to do. But I can’t do that. That’s the point – I have to rely on myself, no one else.

I can’t just stand here watching the trees drown, their roots glugging as they gradually sink in floodwater. Come on, Leah, think.

A river ran through the village I grew up in, and it flooded all the time in winter. I remember seeing the council workers down there in the pouring rain, digging spillways to divert the water. That’s it! I turn around and splash back through the mud towards the barn.

There are loads of different shovels with different purposes, but I don’t know what they’re all for, so I grab as many as I can carry and try to map it out in my head as I race back. If I dig a channel across the top of the Balsam fir field, it would give the water somewhere to spill into before it reaches the trees.

It might already be too late to save them. I splosh through the puddled water and run to the other bridge and through the Blue spruce field until I reach the Balsam firs again from the opposite bank.

I start halfway along the riverside where the bank is at its lowest point and the most water is flooding out. I ram the shovel into the ground and shove my foot down, pushing it in deep and heaving up a huge clump of saturated earth and chucking it to the side. Water floods into the hole instantly, but I carry on, digging the same spot until I can’t get the shovel down any further and water from the river has pooled into it. I move on, overlapping the dig sites until they meet, moving slowly along the path of the river. The ground is so wet that the shovelfuls of earth are too heavy to pick up, but it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. There must be at least two thousand trees directly below the river – the only thing that matters is saving them.

I pile the earth I take out onto the edges to create a barrier and start following a roughly parallel line with the river towards the border of my land. After that, it can flood anywhere it wants, I’ve just got to get it past the trees.

‘Why didn’t you call me?’