In North Dakota, waterlogged life goes on

As the Red River crested Sunday, Fargo, N.D., residents watched with relief as their man-made clay and sandbag barriers held back the near-bursting waterway and signs of normality -- dog-walkers and packed after-church brunches -- reappeared in the state’s most populous city.

But not so in Harwood.

That’s not to say the city has been inundated. Most homes sit on high enough ground or were protected by strong enough levees to escape the water.

But parts of Harwood, a pastoral blip of 701 residents (and more outside its boundaries), have become islands of sorts, having to contend with “overland flooding,” which swamps fields, washes out roads and walls off some housing developments with icy moats.

The phenomenon is widespread in the corn and beet fields outside North Dakota’s larger cities and is severe enough that, on Sunday, much of Interstate 29 near Harwood was submerged for three-quarters of a mile.

Thus far, floodwaters have inundated few homes in Harwood, 10 miles north of downtown Fargo, the Cass County Sheriff’s Office said, and the region’s bloated rivers are expected to recede in the coming weeks.

Until then, some residents are living a more waterlogged lifestyle.

Brad Nudell and his 14-year-old son, Jacob, wanted to buy milk. So they hopped in a neighbor’s 14-foot fishing boat Sunday and puttered across half a mile of gray water surrounding their neighborhood.

They dodged leafless treetops and chunks of ice and docked the boat where the water had subsided. A sign on the muddy road jokingly greeted them:

“Welcome to Larson’s Landing on Shure Lake,” a nod to the marooned community of Lake Shure.

Neil Larson -- who owns, for a few weeks during each flood, a waterside home -- collects mail for stranded residents who’ve notified the post office. He sorts letters into four bins and parks them in a cart next to the sign.

The Nudells picked up their Sunday paper, which had a story about how “neither snow nor rain nor floodwaters” could thwart Larson’s mail service. Jacob glanced at other vessels whirring across the lake.

“This will get annoying after a month,” he said.

During 2009’s record-setting flood, the Nudells commuted by boat for about six weeks. This year, Brad Nudell’s wife, Melissa, decided to stay with her sister in West Fargo.

“She doesn’t like boats,” Nudell said. “Sometimes with the wind out here, you get 3- to 4-foot swells.”

Solo passengers might load their boats with sandbags, lest the bow tip skyward. Nudell doesn’t mind.

“We moved here because we don’t want city lights, we don’t want fire hydrants, we don’t want traffic,” he said. “We’re pretty self-sufficient.”

The next arrivals at Larson’s Landing were Russ and Patty Conrad, along with their 16-year-old son, Justin, who had been steering like a river guide. Patty Conrad unloaded two garbage bags of clothing for Sara, their 20-year-old daughter.

Sara Conrad, who goes to college across the Red River in Minnesota, had been planning to move out of her parents’ home, they said. But the flood threat prompted her to move out earlier because she didn’t want to depend on borrowed boats to get to class on time. Her mom was now bringing her some extra things.

Patty Conrad, an accountant, said her boss was understanding when she ran late -- or when she arrived in soaked jeans. She’s learned over five or six big floods in the past to bring a pair of slacks so she can change at the office.

“It only disrupts you as much as you let it,” Russ Conrad said.

Kris Olson, who had caught a ride with a friend, hopped out of a boat Sunday with plans to head to his interior-painting company in Fargo. He changed from muddy knee-high waders into brown shoes.

Last year, Olson was stunned as he watched runoff from the Sheyenne River, one of the Red River’s tributaries, sweep over fields and cause the community’s tiny slough to swell.

“At first, it was fun,” he said. “It was kind of like you were on an island.” But the daily routine vexed him.

That year, he was the impromptu captain of a neighbor’s boat, ferrying five children -- including his 7-year-old son -- wearing life jackets and backpacks across the temporary lake to school. A few hours later, he returned to motor the other children’s father home. He crossed the water again, picked the children up from school and ferried them home too.

“Then we’d go back and do it the next day for four to five weeks,” he recalled.

Amid all this, his golden retriever, Bailey, had gotten sick. He took her to the veterinarian, who needed them to return the next day. So he and Bailey got a motel room instead of boating back and forth.

Once last year’s sort-of lake began to shrink, Olson discovered that the water had washed cornstalks into his backyard. He slipped on waders and speared them with a pitchfork.

“It was sort of like a big field of bamboo,” he said.

This year, the flood threat arrived earlier than anticipated -- and the boat belonging to Olson’s neighbor was docked at Lake Mary in Minnesota.

The man sped off to retrieve the craft. Olson and the neighbors were counting on it.

ashley.powers@ latimes.com