Archived Thoughts for 02/26/06

Thoughts of a Rural Woman

A Record, A Storm & A Danger
by The Editor, Rebecca Brown

First the record: 51 days of rainfall -- started December 17th & just kept a-pouring -- it's been a magnificent year for lichen & mold!

Then the storm: a huge wet wind, which so worried the weathermen that they came on the news to warn us about it, roared in from the Pacific Ocean & downed hundreds of trees on the mainland & across the Olympic Peninsula giving us a power outage for 48 hours. You know those crews were working frantically to get us all back on line in time for the Super Bowl, & they did!

Comes then a spate of bright, frigid & breezy days & freezing star & moonfilled nights, & in that climate, we set out, with Buddy-dog ensconced on his seat in the back of our 20 year old minivan, for a 3 day sojourn in Seattle for Webmaster's VA hospital appointments & a family reunion.

Driving home on the fifth sunny day, on our seven hour meander on a ferry over the Puget Sound, across islands & bridges until we cantered along the highways around river bays & the foothills of the snowcapped Olympic mountains, pulling off for necessaries & relief, we continued our Winter-long hunt for a magnetic red, white & blue Support Our Troops ribbon.

We even stopped folks at their cars asking where they got theirs. No one across this land had one: not Hallmark or Swains -- the outdoors purveyors -- not RiteAid or Walmart, Safeway or Albertson & none of the hardware or lumber companies had any -- lots of God Bless America ones.

Then I thought to stop off at the recruitment centers in Port Angeles. The Army was locked; off about their very imporant business, I'm sure. At the Marines' office I stepped into an astonishing zone of energy -- three vibrant, squeaky-clean young men in red t-shirts & dark trousers, almost stood up as I entered & one asked: “How can we help you, Ma'am?” I mean really, what on earth could they do for this frumpy, travel-worn old grandmother?

I surely wasn't there to sign up -- when I was a young gal in another country, females could only be nurses & service providers, & even were I fifty years younger I wouldn't have been accepted so myopic, knee-damaged, hearing-impaired was I even back then -- heck, we'd have all had a good guffaw!

Well, it turns out when I asked if they had any of those magnetic stickers saying Support Our Troops, they didn't, & suggested all of the places I'd already been to. I thanked them for their service on our behalf & backed out to my waiting old warrior, & thought about & prayed for those young soldiers so full of life & respect -- all the rest of the way home.

Now to the danger: turning into our driveway just before dark we came upon an eerie sight -- 5 toppled young Western Hemlocks - Tsuga heterophylla - all of 60 feet long, laid over our bedroom roof, sprawled across the space between our cabins with branches dangling down to the ground. Their combined weight had pushed the corner of our cabin into the ground & cracked the roof beams. It could have been so much worse!

Inside, one single branch had punched a hole through the roof & stopped not 2 feet from my pillow. Of course the bedroom was littered with conifer debris & broken glass from the large picture frame of our wedding day photos that had hung on the wall which had buckled. The floor in that corner canted downwards. It could have been so much worse!

I almost wept when I saw how our two pink 12 foot high rhododendrons - Rhododendron macrophyllum - we'd planted the first year we came to this country, had been mangled by the falling trees. It could have been so much worse!

After calls around to neighbors we found out, while we were gone, another huge windstorm had roared down from Canada, over the Cascade Mountains with their record snowfall & tore across the Peninsula, taking out the power until Friday afternoon. The jet stream on the weather news was like a wiggling snake! All that freezing wind had dried out the land & trees out here have only root wads a couple of feet deep -- mostly they keep upright by weaving their roots together & hanging on for dear life.

Much, much later that night, exhausted & ready to drop, I did not lay my head down on my pillow easily, although the soft breeze through the hole wafted that sweet resin scent over me all night. I kept thinking that had I been there when the trees came tumbling down, I'd have had such a screaming fit you'd have heard it clear on the east side of the Mississippi River. It could have been so much worse!

Dawn came bright, cold & dry again & Mike came down from up the road to take photos, & then lumberjack Rick arrived with his chainsaw, & life got noisy!

It's pure poetry watching this seasoned feller dance along the trees with his chainsaw going through their 12 inch trunks like a knife through potatoes. It could have been so much worse -- they could have been older trees with 24 inch trunks & 100 feet in length & twice as much weight.

Three hours later all 5 trees were shaved of their branches & bucked-up into ricks of wood, & I was hauling & stackings piles of branches & twigs. It could have been so much worse -- they could have been many more from the copse, windows could have been broken, the roof smashed in, & Poppa's cabin could have gotten hit too.

Handyman Steve had a hydraulic jack & helped raise up the foundation post again, the weight had punched it down 6 inches, & then old-timer Emil got on the roof & patched the holes & the split roof-join. It could have been so much worse!

As a golden sunset lit the copse behind us, all was as done as could be, & we waved farewell to our friends before staggering inside to shake off the saw chips & vacuum up the bedroom. Finally we collapsed, with our aches & pains, into our recliners.

All permanent repairs will have to wait until the dry summer season. It could have been so much worse. (I have to keep tellin' myself that!)

Rebecca