hurricane

Back when I was a kid, we all went to the Smith’s house when a hurricane came through South Georgia. It rained hard, the wind blew, but the adults wouldn’t let us look out of the windows at all. The lights flickered and did not go out. It was boring.

A hurricane came through Valdosta Georgia back in 1985 or 86, and because I was renting an apartment I didn’t care. I walked to the store to get some beer and realized drinking while being outside wasn’t a good idea, and for that matter, being outside was a bad idea. It was fun, kinda, to lean into the wind like I could.

I was sent to Mississippi in 2005, on the heels of Katrina, and that was life altering. I got there right after the power came on, and the people who owned motels and hotels reserved some rooms for people doing damage assessments so I never slept on a floor or in my truck. I met people who had lost everything, with no way of finding out if their families had survived, or if everyone else was dead. I went to a place where the smell of death filled the air.

Michael just missed us in 2018, but hammered my sister’s place and hometown of Blakely, Georgia. Then in 2023, Idalia hit and flooded my property, which killed many trees. In an odd way, I think that hurricane helped convince Aqaba that living inside was better than not. But by last year, when Helene hammered us, Aqaba was an inside cat.

Helene was the first, and the last, major hurricane I rode out. I had plans to evacuate, rented rooms, had a place to board the animals, and everything was set. Helene’s predicted track shifted west, I cancelled reservations, then she moved back to the east, hard. It was too late to find a place to run.

The storm passed directly over my house at about one in the morning. For about four hours all I could hear was wind and rain. At one point, it was so dark I started hallucinating colors. The wind rode in through the woods like waves at the beach, getting louder and louder, then receding, with the crack of  murdered trees punctuating the sounds. I lay in bed, fully clothed with my shoes on, waiting for the roof to go, or for a tree to come down on the house.

            At one point I was pretty sure I had made a serious mistake in judgement (I had) and was going to pay for it (I didn’t) but once the wind speed hit one hundred thirty eight there was nothing to do but lie there and wait. T’was a long night.

Right now, Erin is still in the Atlantic, heading north with two other systems cranking up. I enter the teeth of the 2025 Hurricane Season having rode out a high CAT 3 Hurricane. I will not do that again. Ever.

Whatever comes out of the ocean this year, I am running from it.

Take Care,

Mike