Well, obviously we didn\u2019t get all the rain that we needed for farming and ranching and recreation, but we can thank God, we got enough to keep the forests somewhat green and minimize the threat of forest fires in the area, and McPhee Reservoir didn\u2019t become as depleted as it could have been. Always the optimist, I have to believe that even the little showers we\u2019ve been getting will be helpful for next year.<\/p>\n
Did you know we have what\u2019s called a \u201cmonsoon season\u201d in this high desert plains area? I\u2019ve lived in Dolores for only a little over two years, but I had never heard that until recently. And some of the recent thunderstorms did their best to \u201cflood\u201d us with moisture! I know, half an inch or three-quarters of an inch at a time isn\u2019t much, but while it was falling, it seemed like a lot.<\/p>\n
I was sitting on the back porch of Jerry and Christine Chadwick\u2019s home during one downpour. It was wonderful, and as we felt the moisture spraying off of the big pine trees, they reminisced about years past when the river would flood, and people had to boil their water for a few weeks until the river receded. Jerry said there were instances when people would turn on their taps in Dolores and minnows would come out! And Christine remarked about the different shades of brown that we see in the river after a rainstorm or two today. Indeed, Mother Nature in always amazing, in monsoon seasons and in dry spells. When we take time to look around us, we easily see how majestic God\u2019s creation really is.<\/p>\n
One of my personal great days this summer was tubing down the Dolores with my 11-year old grandson, Jack. It was the end of June, and the water was low, but I had promised him this would be one of the things we would do while he was visiting us this summer. Well, the ride from behind Karla\u2019s Kitchen down to the \u201cbeach\u201d was really a beautiful, fun ride. Only once did I have to get out of the tube and walk 10 yards. I\u2019m not real sure why; it was either because the water was too low or I was too heavy! (How does that work?)<\/p>\n
Truly, we had a wonderful time, saw some beautiful country right in the middle of our community, and we met a lot of nice people along the way. One group at a wedding reception at the community center, when they saw us floating by, offered us \u201ca plate to go!\u201d Jack had so much fun that we did it a second time.<\/p>\n
Yes, although the Dolores River looks muddy some days after a rainstorm, it\u2019s not the mighty Mississippi. But it\u2019s our river, it\u2019s beautiful, and it\u2019s not a trickle. It keeps on flowing, and we should keep praying.<\/p>\n
Rick Carpenter is pastor of the Johnson Memorial United Methodist Church in Dolores, and also of the Methodist church in Dove Creek.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well, obviously we didn\u2019t get all the rain that we needed for farming and ranching and recreation, but we can thank God, we got enough to keep the forests somewhat green and minimize the threat of forest fires in the area, and McPhee Reservoir didn\u2019t become as depleted as it could have been. Always the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[188,407],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-56996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-dolores-star","tag-religion-and-belief"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56996"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=56996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}