My fear is becoming a realization

When we bought our cabin on Fort Peck Lake I had one immediate fear: the lake would leave.

Entering our seventh season at the cabin my fear is being realized. The bay out our back door is rapidly receding, so much so that by ice-out I don’t think there will be enough water left to float our boats.

My fear was based on an old photograph in the Billings Gazette taken from the Rock Creek Marina, less than a mile by water from our cabin. It showed an expanse of dry, weedy land that used to be covered in water.

I don’t recall the year, but I think the photo was taken in the 80s or the 90s. A more recent view, taken by Google Earth in 2007, shows a similar landscape.

It wasn’t that I didn’t expect it to happen again, I just hoped it wouldn’t. Now it has.

Along with much of the West, our little corner of the world, has been suffering through a prolonged drought. For the second winter in a row we had very little snowpack. Now it’s spring and there’s little rain in the forecast.

Last summer was brutally hot and dry. Most of the stock ponds and reservoirs in this part of the state are empty. There’s also little grass, a double whammy for ranchers, many of whom have been forced to sell their herds.

I keep hoping for a change in weather, a prolonged wet period to break this drought, but nothing looms on the horizon. Instead, all I find are more stories about low snowpack and record-high temperatures.

With most weather phenomena someone always remembers a worse one.

“Sure,” they say, “This is bad, but not as bad as ’79 or ’62,” or whatever year they remember as being worse.

This is different. No one remembers a hotter or drier summer than we had last year. Not even the most rabid climate-change deniers.

I accept part of the blame. Three years ago, after getting snowed-in at the cabin, Barb and I bought two snowmobiles. It’s hardly snowed a flake since. And that cabin on the lake is now just a cabin, the lake having moved somewhere else.

A check of Google Earth from 2009 shows a return of water at Fort Peck. Our bay was high and wide, and floating dozens of boats. I expect the bay to be full again someday. It’s just not shaping up that way this year.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]