The return to normal

The Red River crested slightly below predicted levels and is now slowly receding from the clay levees and piles of sandbags. Our little tributary has sunk back down to its average level, if such a level exists. You see, in this kind of environment and this kind of landscape, nothing is static. Change is normal. This entire basin, with its countless streams and gravel ridges, is young in geologic time. The Red River is merely the last vestige of a humongous glacial lake. The channel is alive, drifting and slithering back and forth like a snake unsure of its destination. The people living here were hunter-gatherers, then farmers, then industrial and now something else. What is the mathematical mean in such a place? Every thing, every era, every variable is part of the norm.