Posted 9/12/2017 3:05 PM (GMT 0)
Hello, everyone. Finally got power back sometime during this past night, so I can make a few observations about this most recent, very unwelcome, Florida visitor.
BTW, having the power suddenly pop back on after it has been annoyingly off for several hours, has to be one of life's significantly underrated pleasures. It elicits both the announcement of a "Finally!" and such a sigh of heartfelt relief when it happens.
As a more or less lifelong Florida resident, I have seen plenty of hurricanes come through here in north central Florida, sometimes being directly in the paths of them, more usually off to the sides. One thing I have come to observe about them all is that, if one sees enough of them, they each come to develop their own personalities, in terms of intensity, forcefulness, the fear they create, and the amount of simple awe that each generates.
This Irma has already formed in my mind as one of the worst of the lot, both in terms of the sheer ugliness and fearfulness of the thing, coupled with all the dismaying damage that it has caused. Just learned from watching CNN: up to 25% of the homes in the Florida Keys destroyed, millions still without power, millions of lives and livelihoods disrupted.
But we will rebuild. Why? Because that's what we, as humans, do. It is one of our most admirable qualities.
For me, hurricane veteran, this most recent experience was a collection of events that I had witnessed many times before, but, as with each storm having its own personality, each experience with one of them becomes memorable in some way in its own right.
Such as with watching the monster, a Cat 5 at that point, creeping along the TV screen map, nervously waiting to see which way it turns next. The relief felt when it turns its path away from us, then at the same time the guilt of knowing that one may inadvertently be wishing it away on to a path of destruction elsewhere. Things such as this storm produce such a range of complex, conflicting emotions.
Or as when driving through the streets of the city in darkness and pelting rain, through wet, deserted streets with darkened traffic lights (power off), and surrounding darkened buildings, in the heavy wind and rain, all because one's 96-year old mother in her across-town condominium has not answered her cell phone, and one has to find out of she is all right. (Turned out she had simply misplaced the phone, and had not heard it ringing).
Then driving back home, with the rain seeming to pelt a little harder on the windshield now, and the trees planted in the street medians starting to sway a bit more than before, and the rushing sheets of rain becoming highlighted in the shine of the headlights and the streetlights (the ones that are still working), with a kind of eerie, haunting silver gleam. It’s sort of like being in a kind of uneasy, menacing dream, not quite a nightmare, but one filled with growing desperation and tension. But this is no dream. This is real.
For me the most ominous and unsettling feature of these hurricane experiences has always been the sound of the wind, as it wraps around the house, and then gusts higher for a few seconds, leaving the realization with us that it is totally surrounding us, and we are now totally within its power. The wind here in Gainesville from Irma was reported in today's local newspaper as only 56 mph (hmmm.. felt higher to me), tropical storm force, not so bad as these things go. But even at that speed the sound of the wind is chilling, and produces a sort of primal fear in one as to what that wind may be capable of doing.
I think one of the best images I ever came across for describing what the sound of a hurricane wind is like, at least from a psychological perspective, is a scene from the original Godzilla film (1955). A small group is on an island being overwhelmed by a typhoon, with its accompanying high wind and rain, in the middle of the night. As the group huddles together and listens to the wind, they begin wondering if what they hearing is the wind, or the roar of the creature Godzilla, or the two combined. The roar of a strong hurricane wind produces that kind of effect
Right now, this morning, as I look up from my monitor, and out the adjacent window, I see that the sun is shining and there are white, puffy clouds across the sky. Everything looks perfectly normal now. Like a typical mid-September day here in north central Florida. Except for the numerous bunches of small, scattered tree branches that now fill the yard, the raking up of which will fill my afternoon today. But that's okay. I have done it many times before.
Nature has it cycles. This has happened before and will happen again. Life goes on, however unpleasant the immediacy of it may be.
But our resiliency as a species makes me proud. Give us your best short, nature. You may knock us down, but for sure we’re going to get up again.