“It’s not a bad lesson to learn in the
bleaker months: how you view a storm is a question of perspective; provided you
find the right rock to watch it from, it could be the most incredible thing
you’ll ever witness.”
- Dan Stevens
- Dan Stevens
“I
don't just wish you rain, Beloved - I wish you the beauty of storms...”
- John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
I live in a place of fierce Autumn storms. They are not frequent; my place is a place of fairly moderate weather most of the year. But when storms do happen they are usually of a most tempestuous and vehement sort. The rain is of biblical proportions, the wind formidable. The wind seizes the crowns of trees and makes them arch and curve in obeisance – genuflection and curtsy. Then tears their silly heads off and tosses them at their roots.
The
rain, not the soft and dulcet succulent rain of summer, drives in pelleted
force to the ground. It forces the
sapped soil to leap and scrabble like a
cat on glass. It wallops that soil until it relents and turns to quagmire – a
bog of brown slurry bedecked with fallen leaves, twigs, and berries.
I have
seen intrepid birds, too addle-brained or too late to take cover, tossed like a
shuttlecock into and about the air. As I see them twirled and tumbled down the
street, I fear for their little damp lives.
Our
windows shudder and tremble; my bones fret and ache. I feel an intense need to
check that our domestic creatures are inside and warm, that they are tucked and
swaddled and safe. I worry about cold and wet birds; squirrels without tail
enough to drape over their noses; moles with soggy parlours; and I even mourn
the drenched, sodden earthworms – drowned and abandoned on the sidewalks as the
storm tromps off.
Storms
are repentant, though. They do try to atone. After haranguing us soundly, an Autumn
storm always leaves a beautiful sky. An apology in pinks and yellows, and
marshmellow clouds.
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