I am sure I am not the only one in America to watch these extreme weather events from afar, with a sense of unreality, even surreality. The hurricane is so far away, but news cameras successfully communicate the breathtaking devastation. It is hard not to feel the water lapping up around your knees, or the fires burning perilously close to your own body and possessions. Each new storm brings new levels of human suffering and alteration of the landscape. Something in all of us is washing away or burning up right now.
Every corner of the country has its own potential weather disasters, and I guess in some way (consciously or not) we choose the manifestations of extreme nature that we can at least tolerate. Having opted to come back to Duluth, I'm fully aware that I've returned to a winter experience that, frankly, I don't particularly like but I guess I prefer to some of the alternatives. My first full winter here in the early nineties, Duluth had a forty inch snowfall, the famous Halloween blizzard. The city shut down for days, and over six months later, huge orange and black bags of leaves began to appear from under the melting snow (I wrote more about that storm on March 16, 2017). My favorite two winters of my life were spent in England, where 30 degrees F was "frigid" and only light coatings of snow fell, so I'm not looking forward to what's coming. This September's lingering heat and stillness must be savored, not only horizontally but vertically, if you know what I mean. Thank you that I'm not down south. Thank you that it isn't winter here, yet, anyway.
The last few days, a blog that I'll post next week has been percolating. This may seem like "much ado about nothing," but at my end it is not. I'm calling on all the wisdom I have ever had to be with me when my fingers click away on the keys next Monday or Tuesday. When I first started writing this blog three years ago, I would handwrite my drafts, or word process them in advance. Now, though, the pre-writing seems to happen in my head. That makes for a very busy brain right now, but I also feel a certain calm and inner power. All will be well.
