Still Standing
An indiscriminate wind roared its way through the land yesterday from late morning until well past sunset, arms flailing and invisible fists punching random holes in the tree line to the north. In the woods, the sturdy living caught the fragile dead as they tumbled down, turning vertical dwellings into horizontal ones for our most stalwart squirrels and woodpeckers. They’ll adjust in time, I know, once they recover from the shock (I wonder how long that takes for furred and feathered relatives?).
This morning’s walk in full sunlight gave a clear view of Patrick’s chainsaw to-do list for the week. The path back to the woods is blocked in two places by trees too large for me to maneuver, and how that one massive black walnut in the meadow crashed to the ground without either of us hearing it only reaffirms how soundproof our walls are. As I worked in the studio yesterday, I heard the occasional rattling of the metal lawn chairs on the front porch, which I had pushed back under the roof’s overhang, as if that would keep them from harm (it did, but barely. They skittered across the deck planks a few inches from where I’d put them, stopping just short of blowing off the edge). Bird feeders on shepherd hooks made it safely through the night as did the old silver maple behind the house, minus a few branches from her fingertips 40’ above our heads. Stooping to pick those up will be a good outdoor project today in between batches of granola and a handful of journals to be bound. In a heart-sinking flash, I imagine our fellow humans in Mayfield, Kentucky seven hours south of where I type this and humbly realize I am, once again, on easy street as my day unfolds.
I think about the rescue and recovery operations, staffed by veteran disaster response workers and novices alike, joined by community folks pitching in to help their neighbors. It’s a bittersweet camaraderie, picking through what remains of someone’s living room, touching broken framed photos of a niece’s wedding or last summer’s whitewater rafting trip, and in the first several tense hours, listening for sounds of life beneath the rubble. Any sound at all. I once worked a disaster relief assignment for a small town in Indiana where a tornado hopscotched through the village on its way to the forty or so miles of flat farm fields. At the makeshift family services center where those affected could complete damage assessment paperwork in between cups of coffee, I remember a man pulling up in his pickup truck, towing a trailer piled high with twisted metal, bent siding and splintered lengths of wood. Approaching the table where I sat, pen and forms at the ready, he asked, “do you know where I’m supposed to dump what’s left of my house”? Trained to be helpful first, shocked later, I directed him to the designated area and inquired if he and his family needed a place to stay. “We’ve got friends. Be stayin’ with them until we figure out what to do next.” He walked back toward his still-running truck, his shoulders low and heavy with the weight of a strange and unfamiliar burden. An hour later, a farmer stopped in asking if anyone had reported seeing a flock of ostriches running loose; the winds had ripped their protective fencing clean out of the ground. A dozen or so were found later that week, seventeen miles away in the corner of another farmer’s field, huddled under some trees.
Helpful first, shocked later.
We’ve had our humble share of crises triggered by weather events. Went without power for a week one summer after a derecho tore through from the west. In less than ten raging minutes, towering sycamores were uprooted from their places along the banks of the creek, some of them falling across power lines strung parallel to the driveway. I watched lightning strike an osage orange tree on the ridge near the house (too near the house), the flash, crack and smoke simultaneous as I hurried to the bathroom to take shelter in the tub with a towel over my bowed head. Patrick was away at Sundance, without access to internet or any media source; he only learned of the storm from a friend who had traveled to the dance grounds with the news. With no way to tell him I was ok, his first few hours on the trip home were white-knuckled and tense. That first connecting phone call with the reassuring rush of each other’s voices gave me a new and indelible understanding of the word “relief”.
We’ve been trapped on the home side of our creek-submerged bridge after the relentless rains of an already-soaked November and ducked our way through a barn full of pregnant goats after a heavy snow caused the roof to collapse in the middle, leaving the east and west ends serviceable enough to help them through that year’s kidding season. An ice storm caught our flock of guinea hens off-guard one winter, freezing their feet to the outdoor roosting post until Patrick and I gingerly chipped them free. So far, we've made it through to the other side of whatever’s been thrown or blown in our path, doing what needed to be done in the moment and years later, looking back and wondering how. On those chilly days when my joints are a bit stiffer and my bones creak a little louder, I remember I’ve worked them hard and give them a little more time to get a-goin’ to the next task. I’m grateful for our luck and don’t bet the rent on much or very often. Nothing is guaranteed out here except the unpredictable.
Including the loss, finally, of what remained of the old dead apple tree out in the front yard. The first half of it toppled in a storm about ten years ago, leaving a strangely hollow four-foot section standing tall, looking for all the world like a rough-hewn sewing needle with the business end inserted into the soil. A couple litters of kittens were born in the base of that hollow stump, and one summer’s flock of chickens claimed it as their daily egg repository (making breakfast a few steps fresher for us that year). I encircled it with a couple stacked rows of vintage bricks and planted purple wave petunias one summer, crimson mums that same fall. We buried our dear beloved Scout there and the birds that escaped his grasp perched on the uppermost edge of the stump, singing gratefully. I didn’t know I could love a chunk of dead wood so much.
It was encouraging a few springs ago to see a young mulberry sapling take root in that hollowed place and stretch its hopeful young trunk upward, reaching for all the sunlight it could drink. We’ve plucked berries from its branches every year since, tasting life from death and knowing what that means for the rest of us.
In the hard days ahead for the people of Mayfield, Kentucky (and also those in Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee), I send my heart to you on a gentler breeze, bearing comfort, strength and whatever else you need to keep standing.
