Anniversary Interrupted

Our farm in Virginia affords an expansive westward view of the Shenandoah Mountains and Skyline Drive. We have grown accustomed to watching thunderstorms billow over the mountains and roll eastward toward us. Some pass without a raindrop while others bring heavy showers. This evening everything was different.

My wife and her parents arrived for a double-celebration weekend - our 21st wedding anniversary and her father’s 75th birthday, both June 29. My son joined us for dinner but opted to drive home to Maryland afterward rather than stay the night. As we bid him a good evening we looked west and saw not billowing clouds, but a solid black veil across the horizon rapidly cresting over us.

The sky ignited in continuous lightning and the veil enveloped us. Then we heard the wind. It approached like a cresting wave and slammed into the house so hard the windows shook. In the darkness the air was so thick it was hard to breathe. We dashed inside and it continued to build. The power went dead. As I watched the buckeye tree beside the house thrash like bamboo and the glass doors billow, we decided to head for the basement. Jeanne, her parents and I conversed by flashlight, but we could not take our attention from the raging cacophony outside.

After a while I ventured upstairs. As I approached the window rivulets of water streamed on my head. I wondered, “How could it be raining inside?” My flashlight revealed several steady leaks falling from the ceiling. I assumed a pipe had burst, but looking upstairs I could find no evidence of broken plumbing. I stepped back and looked at the walls in disbelief. The horizontal torrents lashing the house were driving through every log crevice and beam forming pools on the floor and causing the “indoor rain” below. Alas, entire beams were saturated.

It was not a “quick” storm. It slowly receded over a few hours and we managed a fitful night of sleep with no power, no water, and no news from the outside world.

The morning light revealed wrecks of trees across the field and driveway - a seventy foot poplar snapped in half; a similar sized maple completely uprooted. In all we counted seven full grown trees fallen. Branches covered the field like confetti. A large glass terrarium had blown off the porch and shattered. Our gas grill and wooden Adirondack chair had toppled across the lawn.

It was an anniversary we will never forget. Little did we know this would turn out to be the great Derecho of 2012.

Time Machine

Over thousands of miles and hundreds of flights my air travel has blurred to a single amalgam. I no longer recall individual airports or trips though occasionally a single airplane ride etches itself indelibly in my memory – sometimes for the drama, sometimes for just an epiphany.

This morning I departed for San Antonio. The air was crystal clear as only a February morning can give. The flight path took us west, and I was amazed how clearly I could make out my very own house below. We then turned gently south, and just as clearly I could see the Potomac River meander from Harpers Ferry through Point of Rocks and past Leesburg – all in a single view. Further on lay Thoroughfare Gap, The Plains, Warrenton, and then Culpeper. My heart warmed to see Old Rag Mountain and then our Novum farm. I had the urge to knock on the cockpit door and say, “You can drop me off here, please.” We continued to traverse the Route 29 corridor until I saw Roanoke and finally the New River leading to Blacksburg.

In a mere thirty minutes I had traced the arc of my existence for the past 47 years, and somewhere there on the frosty Virginia Tech campus my son was walking between classes as I had done so many years before. In some strange kismet I realized my arc of so many years was now becoming a circle.