FORCE OF NATURE

Yesterday I wrote a bit on the importance of the sound of rain as a kind of mental harbor from the storms of cancer treatment.

Funny, but last night we had an actual storm tear up a bunch of the land and shelter here on the Organic Egg Ranch.

It began in the eeriest way: as I stood at my little red campstove chef-ing a sumptuous repast of over-easy eggs and avocado (hey, it’s all we have at the moment; could be worse!) I looked out onto a landscape filling itself with tendrils of fog.

This fog looks little like the stuff that occurs in Bako; instead it has a strange, amorphous quality that makes it seem a living thing seeking prey. Creepy as all get-out! Of course, it could have been just regular ol’ fog trying on its Halloween costume, but I have my doubts…

So I flipped my egg and watched the fog as it swirled its way through the homestead; flipped another as a sound I’ve never heard in the jungle began, something like a jet plane flying very, very low; and by the time I’d flipped the third and last egg (cholesterol be damned!) the sound was directly on top of Hoop House and was accompanied by bolts of lightning hitting the jungle floor nearby!

Hoop House began to blow up like a balloon and for the next eight hours it was touch and go as my happy little home tried to choose between a career as a kite or a shelter for a moron.

I had not been expecting a storm of this magnitude, and had not properly guyed the structure to its base; nor had I completed the internal bracing that seemed so unnecessary in the pleasant weather we had enjoyed so far.

The rain hit a few minutes later, dropping in sheets that came in at an angle, drenching me inside and getting my avocado wet. The nerve! It also diluted my hot sauce.

My phone rang, and it turned out to be a message from the weather service warning of severe flash floods, death, destruction, and chaos. Typical government message, I suppose.

As I read it, the wind hit so suddenly and with such ferocity that everything on my admittedly underbuilt kitchen counter flew onto the floor and started to roll off the platform.

I think I may have invented some new swear words, but that’s okay, language is a living thing…

As fast as I could pick stuff up, this devil wind blew it all back off again, while simultaneously lifting my little Hoop House up from its moorings in order to abscond with it.

I jumped up and grabbed the center crosspole, and 140 pounds of Jungle Dave wrestled it back to its position. That ‘jet engine’ sound, the wind racing through the jungle at hypersonic speed, began in earnest and I held onto the crosspole in more than a little terror.

I imagined how the citizens of Puerto Rico felt and hoped we wouldn’t find ourselves in the same moat, so disorienting was the strength of the assault and its attendant racket.

After about an hour of this, the gale subsided and I came up with a contingency…

Under my bunk, I keep quite a length of a type of fishing line used for dragging the bottom of the ocean, extremely strong and useful for many farm tasks.

I began rapidly cutting lengths that I could use to tightly secure the tarp and rafters before the wind hit again, and in spider-like fashion wove a web all around the tarp to hitch to every available mount.

I found another couple lengths of PVC pipe and lashed them lengthwise across each side of Hoop House, found several spring clips that were strong enough to hold the tarp tightly to the bones of the structure, and picked up everything the wind had scattered in my path.

Then I sat down to eat my eggs and avocado, dammit.

It wasn’t long before the storm hit again with gale force, but I had done my repairs well and Hoop House weathered the assault like the tight ship she is now.

Several trees and unsheltered items did not fare so admirably, however, and we will be walking the property with a chain saw to clear the paths they are now blocking.

I spent the night with one eye open to make sure I still had a roof over me. The storm finally blew itself moribund after 8am this morning.

There’s not a lot of wiggle room living this close to the elements, so you can bet Hoop House is getting the structural improvement today needed to keep it from becoming a flying fortress.

We also are missing a rooster, blown to parts unknown as though he was Dorothy Gale from Kansas in The Wizard Of Oz.

We don’t want the little bastard back, so if you find him, he’s YOUR alarm clock now. 

He goes off pretty much every hour. Enjoy!

And in the words of Dorothy herself in the final frames of the famous film:

“There’s no place like a quiet home!”

Or words to that effect.

The Great Oz has spoken! 

(The pic is me sitting in dry storage, about to guzzle my much-needed coffee in peace…)