In the vision, the village was struggling with everything from failing crops to seasonal floods, sickness in the spring was common, and food spoiled frequently in the oppressively damp autumns. To an engineer like Isabell, each problem could be solved with a well-designed solution, but nature had a way of battering down whatever she built.
She solved the flooding by constructing a series of dams along the river, creating reservoirs that could also irrigate fields in the scorching summers to prevent crops from failing before they had ripened for harvest. The rainy seasons were intense, and most dams would have failed to hold back so much water, but Isabell drew heavily on the power of wood to reinforce them and prevent the flood waters from washing away what she had built.
