A Rusty Wet Symphony of Mud: Modjeska Canyon

THE MUD is made of dirt and ash and water and rocks, some the size of a human head, most the size of fists. The texture is viscous. The shovels hit the rocks, scrape, almost sing as they slide, sounding like pickaxes, the sound of the old local mines of Modjeska, Silverado.

It's a rusty wet symphony.

When you're at your own home, warm, dry, unmuddied, you think that maybe they don't need you but then you go because you hear they need wheelbarrows and then you get there and you see they need so much more than that and there you are: needed.

Generally, three full shovels fill a sandbag. If Rebel Girl is doing the shoveling, it takes five or six.

The sandbags are made in China.

We fill the sandbags with the rocky mud that has filled the house, a dark even tide of two feet in every room. Then we haul the bags up the hillside to secure against another slide.

The flooded house lies below Flores Peak, the rugged upcropping that catches the light and glows in the afternoon.

In 1857, Juan Flores and a band of outlaws killed Sheriff James Barton and part of his posse nearby at what is now known as Barton Mound. Pursued by a posse led by General Andrés Pico, Flores and his men were finally caught on this distinctive rock outcropping in the canyon. Now the peak, named after Flores, is a California State Landmark. Flores' loot was never found. Rumor has it that he hid it up there somewhere.

It is the kind of story that is told to make cold weary diggers laugh and keep digging. We wonder aloud if we will be the lucky ones. We imagine how we'll spend the gold. We already feel lucky.

This house isn't, after all, our house.

Our house didn't burn, didn't flood.

We keep digging.