We arrived Friday morning, after an enormous amount of rain had fallen over night, only to see the creek risen more than a foot and a half from the day before, dangerously approaching the height of the wooden form supporting tons the our half finished arch of stones.
It was still raining hard, so rather than struggle in the mud to try to keep building beside the raging creek, we took the day off to go on a field trip and visited another very soggy bridge site in Prince Edward County.
It looked pretty impressive. There was more water going under it than I had seen since we built it nearly a dozen years ago.
When we returned to the Salem Bridge site, the creek ( the river?) had swollen even more, and water was now pounding the side of the form.
My concern was that a large limb or chunk of lumber might come crashing downstream when we weren't there to deflect it, and so jam the opening and push the form down stream or dislodge the submerged cement block piers supporting the beams below. If that happened, our many tons of neatly arranged voussoirs would all likely go crashing into the creek.
