Subject To the Natural Forces

The theme of this spring, at least for me, is: 

There are powers much larger than yours. Don't think you have control here.

For someone who has great reverence for the many forces of nature, looks to nature for comfort and succor; for everything, really, it's kind of exciting to see her exert her vast power. 

To see spring coming on after a winter that started late and ended hard, to see the trees reddening and blossoming against the greening hills. To know they won't and can't be stopped.

To see storms raking across the land, to be sent to the basement by sirens and a suddenly blatting cellphone. And to realize, as we scurry downstairs, that these are but the pitiful efforts of a colony of ants to tell one another that something evil this way comes.

Flooding has put us on the back roads, taken time out of busy days. Like it or not, we are forced to circumvent swollen creeks and road collapses. You can rail against it or decide it's a gift in disguise. For me, being forced down unknown back roads is nothing but an adventure. I sit forward, hands tight on the wheel, waiting for the next amazement, storing away the route for future use.

 Look at the light, look at the land, live in this hour. You'll be busy 'til you die.

The beauty of a red roof before a curtain of rain, glowing like a ruby dropped in the grass. This, on a back road I would never have taken if the rest weren't flooded.

Looking for the gift in everything: that's the trick to feeling happy and satisfied with your lot, whatever it may be.

I wouldn't have had a visit with this beloved old dame unless my regular route were flooded.

With her windows out
This one won't stand much longer
I treasure her now
knowing that one day
Without fanfare, she'll be gone
and all her trees too

Forces, powers greater than mine are everywhere. The only thing I can count on now is change. And change can be a cleansing, a sweeping away of everything that holds you in place. A flood. 

Off we go now.

And the skies clear and everything is different.

I'm astonished to find myself jumping out of my car and making the exact same image, two days later. The eye and brain, working together, are wonderful things. Light changes everything, doesn't it? But the essential mystery remains.

Someday I hope to work up the courage to peek inside, walk her aching floors, see who is living there now. I'll have to deduce that by their droppings, but I'm good at that. Something in her fortress of evergreens stops me. The cavegirl in me is afraid to be caught in there, behind dark walls.

It's the world's largest bird house now.

I think I love it so because it reminds me of a house on the prairie, with its shelterbelt of great white pines and the open sky all around. One pine took a terrible beating in the last snowstorm. Pines break, that's what they do. Soft wood in hard times.

On this blindingly sunny day, the flood is exciting. I wonder with a kind of electric charge in my brain, a frisson of danger, just how high it will go.

Yes. I can still make it to town across the last bridge that remains to me. Will I make it back home?

Close to the road. Please, no closer. But I can only ask politely. 

The creek isn't listening.

The river wouldn't crest for another four days. Under glorious skies, it crept up and up, even after the creeks had gone down. Here, it's swallowing the levee.

And the tiny ants paint numbers on our bridge abutments, to tell each other what's bad, and then what could be so much worse. It's been here, and don't forget it.

If you're reading this, you're underwater now.

The message to me? Be thankful for what you have. Stop and appreciate at all you've been given. Breathe spring's sweet air and look for her messengers. They're all around you, flying in by night and blossoming by day, singing the song that can't be stopped.

Listen to it!

And The Three Graces dance, each in her own way.

Red maple, sugar maple, black tupelo, boogeyin' down.

Did You See the Sky Last Night?

The storm front that brought such destruction to the states just south of us brought us terrible winds in the wee hours of February 6, winds that it seemed would tear the roof off the house. I spoke with a friend from down the road, whose house also tops a hill, and she said she lay awake all night, unable to get this image out of her head: That the wind would take the roof off her house and suck her two youngest daughters out of their cribs. I lay awake with similar thoughts, constructing disaster scenarios. Finally I got up and paced from window to window, my limbic system having taken over completely. I muttered like a mother lion, thinking about how and when I should take the kids to the basement, knowing that I'd never see a twister coming in the inky darkness. We all ended up in bed together, Baker too, listening. He is stunningly unfazed by lightning or thunder, high winds or rain. But he comforts where he can.

All the storm brought us was rain, some creek and river flooding, and a sunset of unbelievable beauty and majesty. It was like an apology for the terror of the night before. It all started yesterday evening with a sudden downpour, a burst of late sun, and a big fat rainbow, plunging down behind our pear tree.

Ranks of puffy thunderheads marched away off to the southwest, over our meadow. Creamy clouds are ever my favorites.
I shot a lot of creamy cloud photos, and realized we had better get our hineys up in the tower to get the best views, because this was going to be one humdinger of a sunset. There, we discovered a lavender and pink wonderland unseen from the ground, off to the north. I wish I could tell you how those distant ridges looked, lit with peach and apricot. This picture only hints at it all. It's not often you see steely clouds march across a flamingo-pink backdrop.
One little red cloud rose up in the southwest sky, seemingly still inflamed from the previous night's battle.
I whipped back around to the north to see more alpenglow and pink fantasy. I felt I was missing something no matter which way I faced.
Now it was getting serious off to the west. The kids and I were freezing in the rapidly dropping temperature; the wind was still whipping. I stripped off my coat to wrap Liam up and kept shooting.
A closeup of that coral tornado:Here's the wispy underlit backdrop to the pink tornado. At this point we were howling in appreciation.
I think the name I put on this jpeg is sunsetjustridiculous20608:
Finally, everything went kind of steely with just licks of crimson and rose, and suddenly the show was over. We were all breathless with cold and catharsis. These clouds looked to us like dragon heads, coming to eat the sun. Or, as Liam said, "A Triceratops, biting off a piece of plant."
It's hard to know what to do with sunset photos. I take a lot of them, but rarely find a way to say much of worth about them. Sunsets just are. Their beauty is so intense, yet fleeting, that I feel I have to make some homage to it. I have to do something about it. And so I run out and take photo after photo, and then I run up to the top of our tower and take more. It's cool to be able to capture just a little bit of it and share it here, but putting a winter sunset in a rectangle never does it justice. It's like looking at a still from a movie, minus the action and music. It's being bathed in that glow, feeling part of some unique and irreplaceable natural happening in 360-degree panorama that makes my heart race. I spent today in the company of two of my best girlfriends, and both of them led off our separate conversations with, "Did you see the sky last night?? I wanted to call you!"