It
came slowly at first, creeping
under the doors like the first rays of sunlight that peeked
through the fissures in the cliffs 3000 feet above. The
red of the carpet deepened ever so slightly, the wooden
floor glistened. By nine o'clock, though, one could hear
knocking at the door. This was no ordinary visitor, but
the branches of 25 miles of river upstream, of hundred of
square miles of watershed, come to worship at the little
chapel that had seen so many sunny summer weddings over
the years. What the chapel hadn't seen before, though, was
a flood like this one -- January 1, 1997, the day Yosemite
Valley reverted to its former condition of a post-glacial
lake.
