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The Storm is Blowing Down the Tent

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I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up. –Abraham Lincoln

I’m a calm-the-storm kind of person. Actually, if I can avoid it, it’s even better. Is it middle child, peacemaker personality? Is it stoicism? Is it ‘my body is nervous enough I don’t need anymore ruckus’? Probably all three. If you have been impacted by trauma, particularly in childhood, you may know what I mean by ‘my body is nervous.’ It’s the activation of the sympathetic nervous system—the fight, flight, or freeze response. I’m good at the run and hide-you-don’t-see-me method…. But there are people who react to the same sympathetic nervous system activation by fighting. Fighting with words, fighting with fists, fighting with sticks and guns, fighting with orders. If they feel threatened in any way—and that’s what the sympathetic nervous system response is for: dealing with a threat to our lives—then they will ‘punch back harder.’ Most of the time that reaction happens not when our lives are literally threatened, but when we are emotionally threatened, when the belief system we have built up for our protection is questioned or menaced. We will fight, run, or hide. The fight people run headlong into the storm or just as likely, they create the storm. Their ‘nervousness,’ the sympathetic energy, is ‘controlled’ by fighting and jabbing and blaming, just as mine is by running away from the storm or hiding from it. There is storm damage by all three kinds of coping, but the damage done by the fighters can leave a wide path of destruction and wreckage.

Friday was hot and humid. A storm in the morning dropped over three inches of rain in a short amount of time. The heat boiled up during the day, the humidity saturated the air. By late afternoon, there was unrest—the wind was snappy and full of discontent, the birds seemed nervous, and the clouds were spitting drops of rain as we rode our bikes to the end of the road and back. A bit later, the weather man interrupted the national news of gloom with a tornado warning for an area south and west of us, then another area along the long line of red radar marching across Minnesota. As he spoke, five different areas of concern for tornadic activity boxed in the towns of central Minnesota, including us. As the storm got closer, stormwatcher Chris went outside. I went outside to see when I would have to insist that it was time to go to the basement. The clouds were dark and light and all shades in between, roiling in motion—the cold front was slamming into the hot, moisture-laden air of the day—and the fight was on.

The rain started pelting us, so we gathered our things and went down the stairs to the quiet basement. Radio warnings told all listeners to take cover. The threat was real, and our bodies responded as they should. Take cover, run and hide, stay safe in the storm.

It was a fast-moving storm. Soon it was over. No storm damage for us, just a few more inches of rain. Supper and more news of the threat to other people as the storm front bullied its way across the state. Then I noticed that everything looked yellowish outside, and when I saw the sky, I was drawn outside by the unusual clouds. Cottonball pouches filled the sky with an eerie yellow-greenish-orange as the sky cleared to the west and the setting sun cast its colors on the clouds. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them.

These clouds are called Mammatus clouds, from the Latin word ‘mamma’ meaning ‘udder’ or ‘breast.’ They usually indicate a particularly strong storm. They are composed mainly of ice and formed by sinking air, unlike most clouds that are formed by rising air. The dark storm clouds were Cumulonimbus, meaning ‘heaped rainstorm.’ They form along a cold front and are capable of producing lightning, hail, and tornadoes.

Five minutes after I went back inside, Chris called me out again to see the color change to pink and blue. For hours after the storm, our world recovered with the colorful Mammatus clouds.

To the fighters, the runners, and the hiders out there, there is a better way to deal with the emotional threats that feel life-threatening but in truth are not. Our bodies are just stuck in the response that we learned from a threat that was real. The challenge is to re-teach our bodies how to respond more appropriately. We need to activate our parasympathetic nervous system—our rest, digest, and recover system. We need to take control by learning how to relax. Meditation, yoga, qigong, and walking in nature all move our body towards activating the parasympathetic system.

We are living in a chaotic world right now—a perfect storm of the threat to our health by Covid-19, of financial uncertainty and unemployment for millions and millions of people, of racial and human justice issues, of how we are going to vote. Our democracy is in disorder. This perfect storm is trying to blow down our tent; the pegs are dislodging from the ground. Grab a peg and drive it back into the ground. Drive it with science. Drive it with reason. Drive it with compassion. With the milk of human kindness, we can recover ourselves and our world.

In the Midst of the Storm

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Everyone was getting ready for it. The news people said it was another bomb cyclone headed for the upper Midwest. Who even knew what a bomb cyclone was? Why is this new term in our vocabulary, much less twice in a month’s time? Snow removal equipment that had been optimistically ‘put away’ for the season was dragged back out. Parents were expecting yet another snow day off of school. How many does that make? April 10th was the day of preparation. The birds and animals knew something was up. Lots of feeding, flurry, and frenzy. By late afternoon, the snow had begun to fall, and cancellations were being announced for just about everything for the next day.

Early in the morning of April 11th, the wind came up with a rage. It whistled through windows, forced itself through cracks in the house, moved the heat out and replaced it with a cold draft. Good thing it was April and not January. We had some inches of snow overnight that promptly got rearranged with the northeast wind. I was surprised how many birds were out trying to feed in the storm. The suet cake feeder was flung from side to side, its protective roof askew, but a Red-breasted woodpecker and a large Pileated woodpecker clung to its mesh sides.

I marveled at how long they both swung there, holding on and grabbing bites of fat and seed. Finally the Pileated woodpecker rested on the off-wind side of the Maple tree. What an incredible and unusual bird!

Dead branches and pine cones dislodged from the trees and tumbled across the yard. A White Pine branch planted itself, and the snow filled in around it.

Dark-eyed Juncos and Sparrows braved the wind to eat seeds that had blown from the feeders. They faced into the wind and only occasionally did I see one tumble across the snow.

A couple took refuge behind and under a Spirea shrub to conserve some energy and eat in peace.

At mid-morning, we had thunder and lightning and bits of hail that pelted the windows. Every type of precipitation fell that day—snow, rain, sleet, and hail, and all with the accompaniment of the fierce wind.

Early afternoon the sky and snow turned an eerie yellowish-brown color. Along with all the debris that had blown off the trees, there was now a layer of reddish-brown dirt covering the snow. Later I learned the dust was blown all the way from Texas on this cyclone of a wind.

It was hard to tell how much snow/precipitation we had that day with all the changes in state. It’s one of those things we usually take a silly pride in keeping track of—knowing how much snow or rain, how cold or hot it is on any given day. It records our days in a very concrete way—each of us our own scientist. But on this day, it didn’t even matter. It was a Spring mess we just wanted to get over in order to get to the Spring we desired.

By Friday morning, the winds had calmed down, but the snow continued. The critters continued to feed and scratch and sing—a Spring feeding with all the singing—a difference worth noting.

Along with the singing was the unmistakable sign of the imminent and unstoppable Spring—the swollen, red flower buds of the Maple tree.

After the storm, AccuWeather announced that we did not just survive a bomb cyclone—it was a ‘monster storm’ and a ‘powerhouse blizzard’—but technically did not qualify as a bomb cyclone. The pressure needs to drop 24 millibars over 24 hours of time to be considered a bomb cyclone—this one only dropped by 20 millibars. So…there…we…go. We were out of the woods on the backside of the storm. Technicalities aside, the storm was real. If it looks like, sounds like, and feels like a bomb cyclone, then so be it. In weather, we are fortunate to have meteorologists studying and forecasting what’s to come. Science is real. If only we had such forecasters for our own lives. We could get ready. We could prepare ourselves. We could make plans, stock up, let go, and drag out whatever equipment we would need for the upcoming upheaval. Instead we are caught in the raging wind, sometimes tumbled around; we hang on, find some peace, do what we have to do. We plant ourselves in a new reality and let the chips fall where they may. We are battered, yet brave. In the midst of the storm, there is singing—along with an imminent pull towards the future. It is a difference worth noting.

Traveling Through the Storm

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“And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through….you won’t be the same person who walked in.  That’s what this storm’s all about.”  —Haruki Murakami

We left home going home.  A tale of two homes, or three or more.  We left this home we live in right now and headed to the birthplace home of my mother, to my young adult home, to the place we called home with our three children.  And we traveled through a storm.

As stressful as the getting ready to go and out the door is for me, I love it when I’m settled in the car, and the trip has begun.  It’s a delicious feeling.  Even on the road more traveled, there are new things to see.  Even when traveling at 60 mph, I like to take pictures of things that capture my attention and say things that words cannot describe.

It was warm when we left, and as we traveled southwest, the temperature rose to 72 degrees, and the clouds gathered in an arching wall.

As we crashed through that wall of warmth and clouds and wind and pressure, the rain began to fall, streaking the windows with rivulets of water with no destination.

The temperature dropped by twenty degrees.

Like we were entering the Land of Oz.  The Land of Oz is a teaching place disguised in the outward beauty of rainbows, bright colors, good witches and bad witches, and storybook characters.  It’s a place of fun and adventure, of fear and danger, that lulls us like poppies and makes us forget the purpose of our journey.  Until we remember.  And then, everything we have planted, everything that was planted in us, is ready for harvest.

Harvest is hard work and time-consuming, but it is what we are supposed to do.  The reward is in the harvesting.  The benefit is in the gathering.  The lesson is in the reaping.  The profit is in the yielding to the infinite knowing inside ourselves.

“I’ll be here for you after the storm blows through and your skies are blue again and you’re back to you again.”   —Maddie and Tae

 

Every home has its stressful storms.  And with those storms, we can enter the Land of Oz with its fairy tale solutions, or we can pull back the curtain, uncover the fake powers that are ruling our lives, and do the hard work of our own personal harvest.  That’s what the storms are all about—to change us into new people, to say things that words have a hard time describing, to see the new things on the road more traveled, and to settle in to the delicious feeling of journeying down the yellow-brick road that leads us home.

 

A Great Wind is Blowing

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A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache.        –Catherine the Great

March weather, already, has been erratic with record high and below zero temperatures, with balmy sunshine and rain, hail, and snow, and with calm quietness and fierce, unrelenting winds.  The crash of warm and cold fronts caused tornadoes that touched down just miles from where we lived in Missouri during the first half of our wedded life.  The winds tore the shingles off the roof of First United Methodist Church in Odessa where we used to attend.  It seemed like the whole Midwest felt the fury of Mother Nature before it blew off to the East in a devil-may-care huff.

The up and down temperatures had the sap running in the maple trees with sapsicles forming on the frigid days.

On the warm days, sap dripped from the branches, and a little red squirrel lapped up the sweet goodness as he grasped onto the underside.

Then he would run over to the bird feeder and chow down on black oil sunflower seeds.  I thought he must be the best-fed squirrel in the land.

South winds blew in balmy warm weather last Sunday and Monday with highs near 60 degrees.  A storm approached from the west on Monday afternoon bringing rain, hail, and then a quiet calmness.

Late that evening we suddenly heard the wind crashing through the trees, this time from the WNW.  By morning we had snow.

The great wind blew like a madman for two nights and two days.  The barometer was close to the lowest I had ever recorded.  Tree branches thudded on the roof and tumbled to the ground.  It was unnerving in its demeanor and relentlessness—‘an ill wind that blows no good.’  It gave me a headache and frazzled my nerves.

The relentless wind made me feel like other times in my life when I had felt beat up just for existing.  Lyme disease made me feel that way.  The end years of my graduate school career made me feel that way.  I was just trying to do the best that I could, taking punches that had no sense of fair play, and ending up just barely keeping my head above water.  Imagination is defined as the ability to face and resolve difficulties.  We form mental images, most often without conscious knowing, of our life without the difficulty.  We problem-solve, we question, we wrestle with whatever madman is trying to take over our life, and we move in a different direction.  We are more resourceful than we know.  I think the headache has to come first.  Those thudding branches and frazzled nerves prime our imaginations in order for us to see our way to a different, better way.  The way to sweet Goodness.