January 9, 2024

My wife called me and when I came to the kitchen, I saw a heart-shaped design in the foam of my latte. It was a little after 4 AM and we were having our morning caffeine before leaving for the Wilson YMCA for an early yoga practice. Yoga was amazing, and I got some much needed stretching in my lower back, still tight from all the walking I’ve been doing at the lake.

It was a rainy day and when we arrived home, I still had a couple of hours before work. I took a walk into the woods with my camera to shoot a few photos. When I arrived at the creek, it rained, starting light and then progressively increasing in intensity. I worked my way through the woods back to my house, placing my camera under my waterproof jacket. My camera and lenses were weather sealed, but I preferred to keep them dry.

The morning was quiet, but the northeast part of the country expected a severe winter storm. The cold weather would not affect my area of North Carolina, but we would get rain and high winds. As the day progressed, the wind speeds and gusts became increasingly concerning. By afternoon, the entire house shook while the wind whistled loudly through the house. It was all a little unsettling. I moved my SUV to the center of the parking area so any falling trees would not crush it.

In the afternoon, I got a call from Fedex. They were at the main road, but were concerned about driving their truck down the dirt roads with all the rain. I drove to the truck to pick up a small package. A little later, I received a notification that an Amazon package had been mistakenly delivered to a neighbor, as evidenced by the proof of delivery photograph. The mail and delivery services in this area are so notorious for delivering packages to the wrong address that I’m truly surprised when a package makes it to my house. 

I texted the neighbor to make sure it was okay to drive over and get the package from their porch. I chided the neighbor that I wanted to let them know I was coming so they wouldn’t have to notify my next of kin. This was a quasi-joke about a sign they had on their front door that read, “Burglars, please bring ID so we can notify next of kin.” Things in these parts are a little different. The people are friendly, but you don’t want to be on anyone’s property without their permission, and that goes for mine, too.

When I drove to pick up the package, which takes me from one dirt road to another, I noticed that a carport, large enough for two vehicles, had blown from a house south of the pine grove, across the road, and into a crop field about a hundred yards from where it was supposed to be. Metal sheets from the carport’s roof lay scattered in the field. Today, the wind was no joke, and that neighbor was in for a rude surprise when they got home.

The weather was worsening, and I had trash bags outside, so I threw them in the SUV and headed to the trash service center a mile or two away. When I got there, they were already closed because of the weather, so I had to make a U-turn and come straight back home. I took the trash bags out of the rear compartment of my car and placed them alongside a part of the house that looked shielded from the raging winds.

By this time, the sky looked angry; the wind shook the trees, and the rain pelted down. Before seeking shelter, however, I had one more outdoor task to complete. I grabbed a forty-pound bag of deer corn from my vehicle and took to the forest. When I found a protected spot, I ripped the bag open, dumped the entire bag into three piles, and high-tailed it back to the house. Earlier in the day, I noticed the deer had completely ravaged the corn, so I wanted to make sure they had food during the storm.

It was time to close the house and hunker down for the night. The high winds and storming skies would stick around until morning. For now, though, it was time to sleep. 

In bed, I thought about how much I loved storms. As a child, I would grab a chair and go sit in the middle of the worst storms, admiring nature’s power. I loved the lightning shows, the dark clouds, and stirring winds, but most of all, I loved how small nature made me feel in those moments. In troubling times, fierce storms had a way of making me feel small, and if I was small, then I reasoned that all my problems and worries were equally insignificant.