The Year of the Flood

The Gardeners gather to celebrate the Festival of Arks and remember Noah, “the chosen caregiver of the Species” (110). Adam One begins with a sermon, announcing that the Gardeners’ children have built little Arks and sent them down the creek along with their messages of respect toward God’s creatures, hoping that they will reach the children on the other side.

Adam One reminds everyone to take care of their Ararat storerooms, where each Gardener is supposed to store dried and canned food in preparation for the Waterless Flood. He announces that on this day they mourn the deaths of all people and animals destroyed by the First Flood; he then tells the story of Noah. Noah was the only one who was warned about what was coming, and the God’s Gardeners are “a plural Noah: [they] too have been called, [they] too forewarned” (109). Adam One quotes a passage from Genesis and reminds everyone that “any further cursing of the ground would be done not by God but by Man himself” (108). He emphasizes that God made a Covenant with animals, which proves that they are living souls and not merely a food source.