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OAKLEY, Summit County — No matter how much mud Richard Bliss moved away from his cabin, it just kept coming.
"You can't move it fast enough," Bliss said. "There's nowhere to move it to."
Moving, it turns out, was the only thing left to do. About a dozen family members and friends helped Bliss pack up the contents of the cabin Friday night, leaving the 17- year-old Oakley home in Mother Nature's hands.
"We've salvaged what we can," Bliss said. "We'll see what happens."
"My heart sunk initially," said Karylyn Bliss, Richard's wife. "Then I went inside and I went oh, we're going to be okay and then the hill kept moving."
Mud, trees and other debris had been sliding down the saturated hillside and onto his property for several days. Things got really bad Thursday, when the root ball of a tree crashed into a corner of the cabin and broke through the wall.
If everybody walks away alive at the end of the day, it was a good day.
–Richard Bliss
"We got the root ball out, but the whole hillside has just been sliding," Richard said. "It slid about another 20 feet earlier (Friday) evening while we've been moving stuff out."
Bliss, who lives in Centerville but spends about half his time in Oakley, estimates the 5½-foot-deep wall of mud pushing against his cabin has traveled as much as 100 yards.
"It's all somebody else's yard that's coming into mine," he said. "The slide started on a couple lots above me, and it just keeps coming."
The weight of it all, Richard said, is pushing at the foundation, leaving him no choice other than to pack up and hope for the best.
Despite the cabin moving off its foundation, the house appears to be intact -- for now.
"It's really wet out here," said Karylyn. "And the snow is just in the beginning stages of melting up here. I think it's going to take awhile for it to dry out before we know (if the cabin can be salvaged)."
The most important thing, they said, is that nobody got hurt.
"If everybody walks away alive at the end of the day, it was a good day," Richard said.
The cabin had been mostly cleared out by late Friday night. Standing outside the cabin, Richard pointed to the deck, which in some areas had been pushed away from the home.
The American flag mounted on the railing, he noted, was still waving in the wind.
"Like every good ship, the flag goes down last," he said.
*Story written by Jared Page with contributions from Mike Anderson.*Email: jpage@ksl.com
