For a few hours during Isaias, no news or noise — only the sound of waves breaking
Having lived most of my life along Southern waterways and coasts, I’ve known an alphabet of hurricanes and don’t generally seek out their company. But I also like a good show and the uncertainty that comes with a good storm, and so I settled into my evening and a screened porch from which to view Isaias’s approach.
A libation in one hand and my phone in the other, I confess to feeling very much alive. I would even put it at giddy with excitement. This was mostly because I knew that Isaias was merely a tropical storm as dinnertime approached and that landfall, when it might become a hurricane, was still hours (and 60 miles or so) away.
Snapping photos and taking videos, I began to register a faint feeling of elation building as the tide began to rise toward the beach. The usually modest waves of one or two feet grew quickly to enormous heights, cresting and breaking two or three times their normal size. Everything was very loud. Already water was pouring into the porch, from both the ground and the ceiling.
High tide under the full moon was due at 9 p.m., but it came on sooner. By 7 p.m., I wondered whether waves might breach the flimsy fencing along a line of puny dunes and engulf my room. It occurred to me that I should be afraid, but, perhaps foolishly, I wasn’t.
In fact, I felt more alive and happier than I have in weeks. For a few fleeting hours, there was no pandemic, no elections, no toxic politics, no lockdowns, no noise except that of bulging waves breaking closer and closer to shore. “Here and now, boys,” I heard the bird squawking in Aldous Huxley’s “Island.”
Here and now is a rare place and time these days.
A large trash can bobbed past, preceded by a small, rubber dinghy (empty). A few tourists (surely) stood on a pier just beyond my perch, perhaps hoping for a glimpse of the Gray Man, a legendary ghost who walks the beach in advance of a storm, warning mothers to hustle the children inside. My great-aunt Tawa was one who often saw him and correctly heeded his warnings.
Landfall was estimated for between midnight and 2 a.m., with winds potentially surpassing 75 mph. I wanted to stay awake in case I needed to do something heroic, or at least wise, but I surrendered to sleep when the power went out at precisely 9:41 p.m., according to the last text to my husband, who was busy 90 miles inland.
Without power and, importantly, air conditioning, I left the sliding door open to the porch. Already, the tide had begun its ebb back toward the now-dark horizon. And though the storm hadn’t yet reached us, I calculated (okay, I hoped) that the likelihood of a surge was past.
Nature worked her usual magic. As waves gradually crashed with decreasing intensity and volume, I drifted into the deepest sleep. I was awakened by the soft light of a new day. A cool breeze filtered through the open door. Just beyond were the brisk sounds of people clearing debris and restoring things to normal.
I have too much experience to tempt the Fates, but my husband put his finger on my determined lack of caution. “You’re always hungry for the storm,” he said, and he is right. But it’s not a bad trait in a reporter or, for that matter, the rest of us these days. As Percy observed, everyday-ness can be a lonely, despairing, soul-numbing exercise. It is only in the contrast of the everyday with the forced vulnerabilities of illness, death or disaster that we experience the exhilarating mix of the alternatives.
Put it this way: Without death, there would be no love. Without illness or disaster, there would be no sanctity of life. Creation, whether a Botticelli or childbirth, is painful and beautiful at once. The storm, whatever its magnitude, reminds us of these enduring truths — and frees us to be real.
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