Post Derecho Anxiety

Albrect Dürer, Apocalypse, Four Angels Staying the Winds and Signing the Chosen, 1497-1498

I don't really know where to begin. August 10, 2020, a derecho tore through the Midwest, causing massive destruction (and was the most costly thunderstorm in modern US history) to our trees. And homes and businesses and a few lives as well. But the trees--the trees won't be the same in our lifetime.

And like, it's fine, right? It's trees. They're not people. You can grew new ones. It's sad, of course, and a bummer to lose the shade and the beauty, but whatever. Right??? Get over it! Hashtag CR strong.

The scene replays in my mind, over and over, the solid sheet of rain on the windows, the THWACKS of smaller branches and debris pelting the house, shredding the window screens. And then CRACK! It's a "crack" that's also a horrible ripping sound. One by one they fell. Whole tree trunks on the ground. CRACK! Around then we headed downstairs. I'm not even sure if I actually saw it happen, or heard the crack and saw it after. 

Naturally after this loss, I wanted to read about trees. Soon after the storm, I placed a books about trees on hold at the library. Me and quite a few other people, because it took a couple of months to get it. I was reading a chapter about benefits for deciduous trees to drop leaves or something, and then a paragraph about wind speeds and tree trunks snapping and suddenly I felt heat rising in my chest and dizziness and I couldn't read another word.

What the hell.

What is this.

Scrolling through facebook, a post from the nature center about a fundraiser by an artist selling prints made from cut trees, showing the rings of the trees. A memorial piece for people to keep of their missing trees. I don't want one. I miss my trees. I can't look at these cross sections. I feel ill again.

I don't really know why. I wasn't scared during the storm. I wasn't emotional after. I accepted the losses to my gardens and the stuff that broke, etc. Our house was damaged but it kept us safe. Was it the terror of the storm? Does plant destruction disturb me so? I have no idea but I don't want to hear that CRACK again, and I don't want to look at broken tree porn. 

I recognize that I'm pretty lucky for my worst experience to be a storm that I lived through and I wasn't displaced or anything. Maybe it's all part of the general anxiety I have about ecocide and climate crisis. The hardest part is knowing it's not going to get better. It's like trying to turn the Titanic but we're already scraping right up into that iceberg. ...   You BET I'm fun at parties!!

Konstantin Korovin, Wind, 1916.