Surviving Catastrophe

Day 1

My battery-operated clock says its 2am and the power is already out. Through our bedroom screen door, I hear wind and rain raging. So this is the storm they were warning us about. I can’t fall back sleep. I lie awake, listening for hours to the power of Mother Nature. The creek that runs under our house is rising rapidly. Are we safe in here? I can hear trees snapping and falling, branches flying, hitting the roof. Boulders are being shuttled down the creek and hitting the beams of our home. Kaplunk, kaplunk, kaplunk. Morning has now dawned and the cat and I stare out the window. She is a very quiet cat, but today she meows loudly, like “Get me the hell away from here!”

I now feel compelled to be out in the storm, naked, to let the torrents of rain and wind wash my fragile human body. I go on outside and open the coop for the chickens. Are they safer in or out? I also open the chicken yard gate, so they have options. The leaves are spinning off the trees and look like massive flocks of birds, spiraling away in a frenzy. It’s so balmy warm. Katydids are so loud, their chorus steadily climbing. I wander and see that some of our buildings have water flowing into them. I run past the Ginkgo on my way back into the house and give it a hug- it feels like the most solid tree on the property, a safe haven, just like WNC was thought to be.

Hart sits in his chair, calm and collected, like a sage. With help, he cleared swales and cleaned the culverts the day before, in preparation. Nothing left to do now but surrender. I am drying myself off when Hart suddenly calls out, “Come look at this!” He opens the front door and there is the Ginkgo tree, kissing our front door, the top 30 feet of its main trunk ripped away, as if to say, “Life is so very, very uncertain, and today, you have been spared.”

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