Hurricane Season

* My thoughts are with all those currently suffering in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Florida.

            During hurricane season last year I was in Rhode Island. My four-room cottage sat across a field that bordered the ocean with a view of Block Island, the place where Henri was predicted to make landfall. As the storm’s spiral churned on my computer screen I considered preparations I should make: bring in the deck chairs, close the umbrella, buy bottled water and peanut butter. We would most certainly lose electricity. A temporary inconvenience, at worst.

            After strengthening to a Category 1 Henri began to weaken to a tropical storm while still swirling in the Atlantic. The Weather Channel said it was highly unlikely it would reach a level to really be concerned about – it would be nothing like Katrina or Sandy. Just your run-of-the-mill hurricane. It was based on this prediction that I decided not to leave.

            But as evening fell the day of the storm, a thing occurred to me that didn’t occur before – before it was too late to leave. A noxious gas of realization that predictions are not what they once were, or what they seemed to be. We have been caught off guard these last few years. Flood levels exceeding predicted levels; tornadoes appearing in unlikely places; hurricanes whipping up intensity over and above estimates in minutes. A couple weeks after Henri, even after downgrading to a tropical storm Ida would flood New York city and 13 people would drown in their basement apartments.

            What had I done?

            Darkness fell. The wind got louder. Rain splatted against the front windows. Around 8pm the lights went out. I lit the single candle I had with me, a perpetual pillar one bearing the image of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. My dog Murphy slid up next to me, pressing himself into the side of my leg, shaking slightly. There was nothing to do now but wait.

            Eventually we tried to sleep. The wind reached a high whine, and I could hear the waves pummeling the edge of the land. The intensity seemed to level off at a certain point, and remained constant. I slept. When I woke I knew the worst was over. One of the window panels had broken, but otherwise we were intact. We were lucky.

            The day after was brilliant and sunny. I walked across the field to the beach and stood on the grassy bank. The waves were raucous, like rearing horses throwing off their reins. Down the beach to the right, I saw an enormous metal object that had washed up on the sand. It was one of the navigation buoys from Block Island, 12 miles away. It was about 20 feet high and probably weighed a few tons. The storm had ripped it from its mooring and pushed it all the way to shore. There were a few people standing around it snapping pictures. They looked too small, shrunken, like in a movie in which these kinds of things were possible. I couldn't stop staring.

            I should have felt scared. There had been destruction. There will be more destruction, we’re told, and worse. But instead I felt something like peace. I sensed the degree of force required to move that object. This thing we humans manufactured and used our tools to put in place thinking we had power over it was simply brushed away.

There is all of our human striving, and there is also the unpredictable, what is out of control.

            That moment of seeing what shouldn’t be seen - a thing out of place – opened me up. It stopped the treadwheel of my mind.

And there, was wonder.

For now, there is that.

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When have you felt wonder?

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