How Nature Saved My Life: Part Three

“My mind is steady, my vision true.

Guide me toward what I must do.

Let clarity rise, confusion fall.

I stand aligned, I hear the call.”

~ The Witch in The Moon

This is part three in an ongoing story, if you haven’t already, I suggest going back and reading parts one and two for this installment to make sense. This is a real story, so all names are changed for privacy reasons.

It’s five o’ clock in the morning when my phone rings.

I don’t hear it, of course, I’m a millennial so my phone has been on silent since 2009. But I’ve fallen asleep with it next to me on the mattress and I feel the vibrations as I wake. I sit up and see that it’s my neighbor so I answer, groggy with a shot of anxiety. Nothing good comes from phone calls in the middle of the night.

“Are you watching the weatherman? There’s a tornado that just turned, looks like it’s heading straight for us.”

I thank her and hang up, shaking my sleeping husband and I get up and start to prepare. I have lived in the south my entire life, give or take a few years, and tornados are about as common as a hot summer these days. I am usually the kind of person who goes out and stands on the porch to look when the weatherman says something’s coming, but something about my neighbor’s call made me take this one seriously.

My husband shoved our cats in their carriers and before we even had time to click on the weather app, I heard the sirens start to blare.

We live in a unique area where our house straddles the line between two counties, so we can hear the distinct sirens for each county when they go off. It was 5:15am, and they were both blaring like they were at war with each other. We don’t have basements or really any underground shelters where I live, there is solid limestone about eight to ten feet down covered by a rocky clay soil, that makes that kind of excavation very expensive. Instead of tucking away underground we do our best by sheltering in bathtubs, central rooms away from windows, and sturdy doorframes. It’s not ideal, but it’s really all we're able to do. My family and I tuck away in the only room without windows we have, the hallway with all the doors shut, and my husband clicks on the radio. I hear our weatherman broadcasting the counties and towns that are in the path of destruction, a sharp edge of concern in his voice. He lists the next area and orders an immediate shelter in a place of safety, and it’s my town.

If you can get inside somewhere, do it now, this twister is about to be right on top of you.

I peeked my head out on the porch anyway, and sure as shit, there it was. A dark, massive twister, hurdling itself towards us. A wave of terror washed over me. I had seen a few in real life by this point, but never so fast, and never so close.

I write often about the beauty of nature, of the muse that is our benevolent mother earth. I am constantly in awe of the pieces of our world, the trees, the flowers, the water, the creatures that over time blend into something that we take for granted. I forget sometimes, as I think we all do, that within all of that beauty is sheer, raw power.

In that moment, as I blinked my eyes like a cartoon character to try and make sense of what I was seeing, I was painfully reminded of that incredulous power that we, as humanity, think that we somehow can control.

I rushed into our little family huddle pile and flicked off the lights and my husband pulled a blanket over us. I hope you’re never in the path of a tornado, but if you ever are and, like us, don’t have underground access you want to do a few things. I talked before about getting to the most central room of your house and away from windows. Door frames are often the sturdiest part of your house, bathtubs too, so bonus points if you can get under or in one of those. Put on shoes or at least some kind of slipper, in case you are walking or climbing on debris when it’s all over. That’s what the blanket is for too, it’s no helmet, but it should protect you from at least the dust and small particles that are in the debris. Turning out the lights can make things a little scarier, but it’s important, because it lowers the risk of a fire if you do get hit. A backpack you can grab quickly and keep nearby when sheltering is helpful too, keep a radio in it, a flashlight or too, and a few first aid related items. Obviously not a perfect solution, but a few tips that can help.

The lights go out and the world around us is absolutely, devastatingly silent. And then, like the flip of a switch, it’s the loudest sound I've ever heard. I am on a set of train tracks and the biggest, longest, loudest train in creation is thundering over me. Doors are flying open and slamming closed on their own. The windowpanes are rattling in their frames. There is wind whipping everywhere, yet the air is completely stagnant and void of seemingly any oxygen. Accompanying it all, was a piercing, bone chilling, never ending, whistle. My husband grips me tighter and I cling to him. My dog is shaking, his massive body crushing my legs. My cats scream from my husband's lap in their carrier. I can’t breathe. I can’t see. I can’t hear.

Instinctively I do something I haven’t done in years. Something I haven’t done since the last time I was on my knees in that wooden one-room church.

I pray.

The prayer that comes to me in my time of need is not the one I had memorized since childhood however. It’s the one that the druid circle of women were reciting that day I came across them in the woods.

Grant, oh spirit, thy protection.

And in protection, reason,

And in reason, light,

And in light, truth,

And in truth, justice,

And in justice, love,

And in love, the love of spirit,

And in the love of spirit, the love of all existences.

Today I know that to be the Gorsedd Prayer, but I didn’t know anything then. It was a prayer I had remembered and read a little bit about online, and it was what kept me stable in that moment of raw fear.

5:25 am. The world is quiet again and we are all, somehow in one piece. Somehow, there is still a roof over our heads. We crawl out from under our blanket and rejoin the world, an eerie silence lingering still.

The power is out, and I can feel warm air trickling in from somewhere, but it’s still too dark to tell. We turn the radio back on, just to make sure we really are out of the woods, and the weather has moved on, warning the next set of counties about the tornado, now, plural, tornados.

We turn on our flashlights and check the house. Built with heavy beams and brick in the 1960’s, the house may be dated and well lived in, but she is sturdy. We find a few cracks in the glass, a few fallen shelves and the culprit of the warm air, the back door wide open, but all in all, we were incredibly, miraculously lucky.

5:45. I call my neighbor two doors down, the one who had called me only a little over 45 minutes earlier to warn me about the twister. She’s okay, and her house is too.

6:20 am. Dawn. Finally, we can see well enough to check outside for damage. I go out back first and my heart trembles. My garden is gone, the wooden two by fours that make up the bed strewn in pieces across the yard. The crepe myrtle tree I planted the summer we moved in is snapped at the trunk and flat in one piece against the sodden ground. Where there was once a fence, there is now evidence of a fence, and atop that evidence is a massive branch from the giant mulberry tree that umbrellas a large part of the yard and our little house. It’s on top of our fence, our little shed, and our neighbor’s fence as well. I wander aimlessly, picking up things and putting them back down, looking up at the tree and then looking away in denial. My rainboots are now ankle deep in mud and sludge. I am snapped back to reality as I hear my husband call me from over the house. I step over the debris that was once our gate and walk around to the front yard.

I am watching my step, focused on the ground in front of me, until finally I look up across our little street, and my heart is broken. What was once Mrs. Alma’s little green house is now barren earth, littered violently with memories of a life. Hernandez's brown brick is not much better, there are a few walls but absolutely no roof. This destruction carries on all the way down our little block, and over the train tracks to the next. Those who do still have houses are down fences and trees and roof shingles and windows. Little Loretta lost a trampoline no one has ever found. Most people are okay, physically. A few people are not. The news changes the numbers on the toll for the next few days.

No one knew it was coming. And if they did, no one told us until it was our problem to deal with.

Our little neighborhood is, for a moment, the quietest it’s ever been. And then it isn’t.

The police arrive, and ambulances, and news crews and gawkers.

And then they are all gone, and it is only us.

We gather and hug and cry and wipe away tears. We pool food and supplies on folding card tables on the sidewalk and in driveways. Raul and Ryan walk around with their chainsaws in tow and, after they clear the street, they start helping neighbors with branches they need help pulling off of roofs and cars and porches. My husband and his buddy Joel from a block over go door to door checking on people and handing out waters Joel had stored in the garage for a day just like this. The women all gather, as we always do, and make sure everyone is fed and families are called and children are minded.

My heart is broken, and yet broken things still sing, and I am reminded of the beauty of community.

To this day, years later, we are still rebuilding. I was worried about everything and everyone after the storm, including my mulberry tree. My heart tree, my friend. Losing a main branch so violently can kill a tree like that, yet she stands. A new gathering of sapling branches have sprouted from the stump of her amputation. Nature is beautiful and powerful and destructive and healing and resilient, and humanity is one in the same.

Thank you for reading, more to share in a week or two. Grateful for you, always.

XO, Alys.