I left New Hampshire in morning rain. The Interstates floated smoothly toward the foothills of the Appalachians, a bright mist cushioning each car in their mad rush west. The vital green hills whispered no warning of the ruin I was headed for, and I had no intuition.

Near Binghamton, New York, I-86 suddenly ended, its white ribbon roadway inundated with brown floodwaters bleeding from the Susquehanna River. 20,000 people had been evacuated from that town, and I drove right into it.

(I pause here to admit: I am often in my own universe while on tour. The taxing schedule, successive days of travel, and small community of my audience makes it hard to keep up with the news. When I drove into Binghamton, a deep guilt seeped into me… these thousands losing their homes and precious things, while I leaped from show to show, happily homeless.)

The detour off the Interstate forced me into Pennsylvania. Low-lying communities were drowned, houses unhinged and swimming aimlessly. Wild rivers marched under overpasses where roads belonged. Vast fields lay deluged, the tops of power poles just peeking above the surface.

After two long hours searching unsuccessfully for an open westbound road, I was deposited into a small Pennsylvania town with one gas station and one road passing through (crumbling into water ways at both ends). I was trapped…

It would take unlikely camaraderie with some backwoods mountain folk, a long journey over unmapped dirt farm roads, and risky evasion of road closure signs to get me out of that town and back on the highway toward my venue in Angelica, New York. I was grateful for the kindness of those strangers.

Angelica welcomed me with warmth and personality, and despite my being hours late for the show, demonstrated hospitality in the following days that reminded me of my home in the Maritimes.

I stayed in a tiny cabin on a farm and wrote many songs. Here’s one of them, performed on the porch of that cabin in Angelica, New York: