After the Storm

Hurricane Irma ripped through an evergreen that sits by the water behind my condo building and now the sidewalks and breezeways are littered with needles and everything smells like Christmas.

That’s the kind of healthy symbolism I am attempting to hold onto now that the storm has passed, the skies are mostly blue, and everyone has come out of hiding, rubbing their eyes and staring at the sun as if it were a stranger.

I went to Hope this afternoon to see how the grounds held up.  I was unsurprised to see that the building itself looked good.  I was moderately surprised that so much of the grounds seemed to be under several inches of water and even the ground that looked dry was actually floating, more of a bog than anything.

And as I made my way around the building, I smiled when I saw that our Little Free Library was still standing.  Someone anchored her strong.

There were pine cones and pine needles and leaves and branches everywhere but nothing unexpected after such a fierce storm with its unrelenting winds for more than twenty-four hours.

But then I looked up and I saw blue sky.

I saw blue sky where I should have seen trees.

“Where are the trees?” I whispered, my heart sinking.

I walked through the boggy water toward the retention pond.  The Mary statue had fallen, Mary’s head nestled among the pine needles, caressed in an amber halo.  I stepped on a wood plank, hopping from one piece of dry ground to the next.

There, by the memorial garden, a large tree, an oak, I guess, hundreds of years old if a day, had lost its fragile hold on the waterlogged soil and collapsed.

And he was not alone.  Virtually every tree that had stood mere feet from the water was either under water or had toppled over when the wind and the water shook the life from it.

The entire landscape had changed.  The waters pushed all the way past the memorial garden.  The picnic table sat in a foot of water.  The path to the bridge out back—impassable. 

I was stunned.

And then I started to cry and then I started to cry more because I was crying over trees!  Trees!  Why was I crying over trees?

I cried because these were the trees where the osprey sat and hollered at me when I got too close.   These were the trees where the ospreys and hawks sat and hunted, where they groomed, where they lounged, where they nested. 

These were the trees that anchored Hope.  These were the trees that lived there on the edge between water and land, the trees that provided shade to the memorial garden, the trees where squirrels played and dragonflies buzzed.

These were the trees dotted in braille-like fashion by the hungry woodpecker.

These were the trees where the cardinal sang his sweet song for his mate.

These were Hope’s trees.

I cried.

The waters will recede.  But the trees are lost.

As I walked, I cried and as I cried, the clouds moved in front of the sun for a second and for a second, a soft sprinkle mixed with my tears. 

God mourns every living thing lost.

And yet, back at home, the air smells like Christmas.  There are lost trees, but they will make room for new growth.  New life will emerge.  New life is born in the seconds following the storm.