One Windy Night

A sort of weather report

   As everyone on earth knows by now, in around 1980 we bought a little cabin on leased land up on Tulalip Bay, on the Tulalip Indian Reservation, outside of Marysville, WA. The photo is of our lot, after the tribe removed the cabin and shop. That is a long story and irrelevant.  As you can see, it is covered with very large Douglas Firs.  Some of them were very large indeed.

   There were tremendous wind storms up there sometimes.  We really noticed them because under all those trees, wind caused a lot of noise.  We were always losing power because the power lines out from town were not very robust, there were trees all down the road and the wind knocked all kinds of junk and branches down on the wires. Whole trees fell and knocked out the lines too.  A few years later they cleared the trees away from the lines, so outages were less frequent at the end of our time there.

   One outage lasted ten days. It was Thanksgiving week.  That was fun.  Fortunately, we had a wood stove.  Ahem.

   There were some wild storms.  There would be big logs washing around loose on the beach, etc. There was always a lot of damage in the neighborhood.  As volunteer firefighters, we were kept busy with calls sometimes during those storms.

One night I was home alone and the wind started whistling around.  I don't remember now where everyone else was, but I was glad that they were safer than I was.  The cabin was a lightweight structure that had been someone's summer place in the 50s.  The Bird had built a bathroom onto the main structure and a shop in back of the house.  A huge Fir stood between the bathroom and the shop.

It's roots reached under the house and under the shop.

   So the wind began to blow.  Then it began to really roar. Night was coming.  It was getting dark.  I had a fire in the little Waterford stove, so I wasn't cold.  But then the power went out.  OK. That was alright.

   Then the wind began to sound like a locomotive overhead.  It was a fantastic amount of noise!  I could hear the summer's crop of dead branches and fir cones hitting the roof.  It was black, dark as tar in the house.  I went to the door, opened it and looked out just to see the storm and hear it directly.  Blackness everywhere, except a few neighbors who had lanterns or candles in their windows.  None of them were very close, so the impression of blackness was not diminished much.  It was raining hard!  I got a face full of water quickly.

   The sky was just a bit lighter. Dark grey and black and loud wind howling.  My outdoor cats were laying low wherever they did at such times.  I didn't have Layla the wolf yet, so I was alone there, truly.

   What to do?  I didn't have the car.  I couldn't leave.  Oh I could have walked, but going out with all that stuff falling out of the trees would have been foolish and I didn't relish walking far enough to get to my friend's house up on the next hillside. The same type of trees lined all the roads.

   I could feel the floor flexing because of the wind moving that big tree next to the house that had its roots underneath.  That's quite a feeling.

   There really wasn't anything to do but wait out the storm and hope nothing fell through the roof, or any of those trees actually toppled.  Some of the trees on the block had done that before!

    So I said "you got me now Lord", and went to bed.  I did sleep.

   In the morning the sun was shining.  The house was in one piece. The cats were fine.  Life went on.  The storm receded into memory.

That was my storm.  It was a rather broad lesson.  Here in town, I never give the wind a thought, though if it hits just right it vibrates the plastic downspouts and that makes an interesting tone to listen to.