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Published on 05/18/1998 All articles from this issue

When nature roars

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By Charlotte K. Jarmy

Reflections

"Are you OK?" That was my son, Ron, calling me after the recent tornado. His call was a greater miracle than the twister itself. A more natural course of events occurs when I call him. He knows I will call after a few weeks, so he waits. It helps to have his friendly co-worker confide in me that she scolds him to find time to "call your mother back."

What really amazed me, however, is that I slept through all the excitement happening a very short distance away. If a tornado wants more attention, it must learn to avoid my nap time. It didn't amaze Howard, who believes I could sleep through anything. He's wrong. I never sleep on airplanes or ships that pitch or rock in an alarming fashion.

I hear people saying, "Nature is scary" or "Mother Nature is punishing us for our sins." Nonsense. Nature just does what makes her more comfortable. When her plates get too crowded, she creates an earthquake to relieve the tension. It's sort of like a huge burp after a full dinner. When the clouds get too heavy and dark, she lets them divest themselves of much of the moisture. I will not look for human parallels for that example.

When she gets bored with the "same old, same old," she allows the rivers and the streams to leave their banks and go for a wild adventure. The havoc that Mother Nature causes gives her no pause. She was here before humans, before houses that teeter on cliffs and before cows that fly through the air during a tornado.

What makes us think we have any effect on that most powerful force? Mostly, we are forced to learn about her potential power to damage our lives and try to discover ways to protect ourselves. Barometers simply hint at the changes in the weather. "It's going up,"claims Howard. I take my umbrella anyhow.

The TV weather man predicts possible thunderstorms. That's the day I skip water aerobics at the Y. I remember only too clearly the sight of lightning shafts over the Atlantic as frantic mothers shouted at their children to "Get out of the water this minute."

We did, shoving our sandy feet into our shoes and grabbing the family blanket as we scrambled to reach the safety of the dank boardwalk at Coney Island.

People who live in flood country return to their homes and clean up until the next time. Tornado-swept middle Americans come cautiously out of their cellars to assess the damage. We who live in earthquake country, walk uncomfortably on steady earth for a while and shiver when a passing truck makes our houses rumble. But we stick around, knowing that there will be other shaking moments when we hold our collective breath and wait for our world to return to normal.

Television's NOVA recently aired a program on the drama of comets, so huge that life could be totally eradicated if they struck Earth, as some scientists presume happened millions of years ago to create darkness and devastation throughout the world. What to do? There are possible plans to attack the hurtling comets with nuclear bombs. Use fire to fight fire? Somehow I wasn't soothed by that prospect.

What we must learn to live with is the phenomenon of an untamable force that can, for whatever reason, bring us delight with shimmering sunshine and majestic rainbows or create such destruction that can and does destroy property and our all-too human selves. Being alive is temporary after all, isn't it?

Charlotte Kaye Jarmyis a Los Altos resident and longtime contributorto the Town Crier.