BurningbirdWe’ve had a thunderstorm two nights in a row.
The first night, I was awoken, terrified, out of a sound sleep from a horrible explosion that shook the entire building. It seemed to go on and on, and I thought at first it was a tornado. I lay in bed terrified, unable to move, my heart beating wildly from the fear.
But it was just thunder. Lucky me, it was just thunder.
I wonder what it would be like to wake up in that state of terror at unexpected noises on a daily basis?
For some, Spring means planting seeds, for others the first flower, baby bunnies and birds, or warm breezes. For me, Spring is here with the first thunderstorm of the season. Our first one just rolled in tonight.
(From NOAA Lightning photo album)
Farrago has been introducing us to her home in a series of photographic essays from out and about in Sea Point, South Africa.
If you’ve never had a chance to see Farrago’s photographs, you need to take some time, now, and look around; especially if you’re in the northern hemisphere and facing snow, sleet, and frozen rain like we had in St. Louis today. The sunny, warm, and brightly colored pictures from Sea Point are more than enough to make you feel absolutely toasty.
Of course, for those who live in the southern hemisphere and who are faced with high heat, I’ve saved a nice snowy, cold photo, just for you.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
One unusual quality to weblogging is reading about summer fires one day, and major ice storms the next.
I must check my map before calling out greetings to friends, such as “Stay cool” to Jonathon and Victor; and “Stay warm” to Ryan, Sharon, and Jeneane.
As for me? I exist in a perfect state of being at this one moment, for which I feel no guilt; but can scrape together enough empathy to wish my friends coolness. Uh, warmness. Wait. Wait! Coolness. No, no. That’s not right. It’s warmness…
“Do not seek for warm fire under cold ice” – Samuel Rutherford
Update: I had forgotten that Mark Pilgrim also lives in the Carolinas. To my surprise, Sam also was hit with the ice storm (for some reason, I thought Sam lived in the West Coast — my powers of observation must suck). Joe Gregorio is also in N. Carolina. So my warmest thoughts go out to them, too.
I lived on Grand Isle in the middle of Lake Champlain in Vermont during the Ice Storm of ’98. We were without power for close to four days, which was a real problem because we had an electric pump system for water. No water, no flush toilet. Believe me, there are worse things than not having heat. Just after the storm, the only movement on the island was National Guard helicopters, called in by the governor. That, in itself, was a bit spooky. We felt as if we were in a war zone.
Most of the trees in our area were decimated in that storm. But oh, that ice was beautiful. Deadly, but beautiful.
I feel for all those caught in yet another “storm of the century” ice storm.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Another posting from last year, wrote while looking out on palm trees and bare streets, walkers in shorts. This year, I repost these words while looking out at white flakes falling past my window, covering the ground. What is it about falling snow that makes one reflective, somehow wistful and nostalgic?
Snow falling gently over rolling hills dotted with trees both green and bare. The cerulean blue sky is captured, muted, and then reflected back in distorted waves from ice formed across a vast lake. Watched through the window, a red fox leaps from snow back to snow bank in the field in front of the house, its color matching the red of the barn next door.
Strand after strand of large Christmas lights are wound round and round the pine tree that stands alone in the field. At night, a switch is thrown and for miles you can see the tree, lights blazing, casting a multi-colored shadow on the snow.
In the morning a rare cardinal in the bush next to the driveway makes a nice counter point to the blue of the jays and the brown of the occasional hawk and commonly occurring finch.
Crystal white, azure blue, pine green, fox red, hawk brown. And then it gets colorful.
Winter in Vermont.