I took my nose on a walk, today, and let it lead me from one memory to the next. It was a cool overcast midsummer morning, the land still damp, leaves still plump from yesterday’s sudden rain. Flowers nodded heavily, leaning from tidy beds over paved walkways like old men rising from a heavy sleep. Birds sought ripening berries through branch and bramble, and dogs led their owners from spot to spot, following their own noses.
First I tramped uphill over needles and cones, a well-trod path winding beneath conifers that lost their heads in the lifting fog. The air was redolent with resin and bark, soft earth and dew-soft ferns, and my nose remembered my time as a student at music camp, days and nights spent tucked up amidst giant sequoias, so close, so tall, that their height could not be seen, and my mind echoed with the opening beats of Copland’s Fanfare, an unexpected reveille to wake teenage musicians and fashion a memory never to be lost.
I walked onward along the ridgeline as the morning cleared, the slanting light breaking through the southern sky, the avenue warming with the summer’s rising sun. The scent of August grass, dry and seed-heavy, a mixture of soil and wood and hay and warmth, took me back to the rolling hills of my youth, slick and golden, begging us to take our cardboard squares to their tops and slide down their gentle slopes.
Farther, I passed beneath a plum tree, the path beside it filled with fallen fruit. The air was thick with a sweet, sun-stewed aroma that filled my brain with scenes of kitchens and bushel baskets and Mason jars and food mills and sacks of sugar all at the ready, as the thick preserves bubbled quietly on the stove.
Heading home, I walked along the main boulevard, wide and now sun-drenched, busy with cars and trucks. I sniffed the scents of diesel exhaust and hot pavement mingled with dust and the wafting aroma of brewing coffee. I closed my eyes and was met with the image of Jerusalem streets as I walked to the bus stop on my way to morning classes. The only thing missing was the adhan, broadcast from minarets, blaring across the awakening city.
It was a wide-ranging journey, though found within but a few miles on foot, a surprising trip through time and distance.
On Tuesday, I said two words that I had never spoken to anyone before.
“I’m scared,” I told Matt.
Matt was a giant. At 6’8” tall, with a firefighter’s physique, he was an imposing presence. He’d had to duck to enter our front door, and when he knelt down in front of the couch on which I sat, to apply the electrodes to my chest and arm, he still towered over me. A phalanx of men surrounded me, all of similar build but of mere mortal height. The cul-de-sac was filled by a massive fire truck that dwarfed the ambulance, both with red lights spinning, engines purring at poised rest. My wife had been on the doorstep, directing them toward me—“Upstairs, and to the right”—and was now providing one of the human-sized EMTs with info on what had preceded our call to 911. But despite Matt’s outsized frame, he was a calming presence, a rock of competence and confidence, spiced with a soupçon of humor that evoked a brotherly trust within my rapidly pounding heart.
Of course, I’d been scared before, but I’d never admitted it aloud, in the moment. Car wrecks, sudden job loss, a rock climbing accident, nearly losing a hand in a newspaper web press, a myriad injuries and mishaps, a televised viola solo in Vaughan-Williams’ “London” Symphony No. 2—I was no stranger to fear, but never had I given voice to that emotion, that primal, skin-tightening, gut-loosening feeling that strikes out of the storm like St. Elmo’s Fire.
This time, though, with a kernel of blue-white heat burning in my chest a centimeter above my heart, with my body pulsating at every heartbeat like an over-filled balloon, with the numbers on the BP monitor angrily flashing “248/195 . . . 248/195 . . .”, the fear was existential.
Matt winked. “Of course you are.”
What followed was Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride to the hospital, an hours-long session of “hurry up and wait” in the ER, an uncomfortable and sleepless night followed by an early morning angioplasty, and then by an echo-cardiogram and more poking, tapping, prodding, squeezing, injecting, testing, and monitoring.
In the end, obviously, I survived. Compared to some folks I know, my experience was relatively minor (one artery blockage, handled with one stent and a few angioplasties, no permanent damage to the heart), and the only true casualty was my illusion of invulnerability. I may have been a 66-year old male, non-smoker, active, with no daily meds and no chronic illness or history of heart trouble, but that didn’t matter. Matt, the herculean EMT, perhaps he was a demigod, but I . . . no, I was mortal.
Some friends really came through for us, while others (sadly) disappointed. Helpful advice came in from many quarters, as did well wishes. And I will forever remember all the professionals—a cadre of EMTs, four MDs, a half-dozen RNs, a score of technicians, and support staff uncounted—who all, with professionalism and kindness and competence and humor, kept us going, instilling hope, calming fears, and distracting us at the trying points of our journey. To them, my eternal thanks. You saved me, in many ways.
Admitting my fear to Matt was a turning point, a true and unvarnished admission of my own mortality, and it affected not just this experience, but the rest of my life, moving forward. I am not immortal. I can be broken. I do need to take specific care of myself, rather than trusting in my innate constitution and past record of good health.
It’s not that I will be living in fear, constantly worrying that Death waits around the next corner, but just as I check my side-view mirror before changing lanes, there are simple precautions I can take to keep myself in good nick as long as possible.
Distant friends sniggered at the name, “bomb cyclone,” as if we Seattleites were just being puerile drama queens. Toss in the “atmospheric river” label and folks were pretty sure we were making the whole thing up. We weren’t.
To be fair, both terms are relatively new. “Bomb cyclone” came into use in 2018, and the boffins at NOAA tell me it is “a fast-developing storm that occurs when atmospheric pressure drops at least 24 millibars over a 24-hour period.” Cool. (To us layfolk, it’s a windstorm.) The term “atmospheric river” is 0lder—from 1994, describing atmospheric water vapor that gets transported across the mid-latitudes—but here in Seattle it took quite a while for that term to replace our old name for the firehose of rain that comes to us from Hawai’i, i.e., the “Pineapple Express.”
In my four decades in the region, we’ve had both, and often. Windstorms come once or twice a year and are usually enjoyable (if you like watching nature do its thing in an obvious but not terribly threatening way). Now and again we’ll have a big blow, like the Inauguration Day Windstorm of 1993, which caused the death of six locals and left 600,000 homes without power, but they are (or, at least, were) rare. As for the Pineapple Express, it’s pretty much an annual thing, bringing weeks of rain, but during La Niña winters it doubles down and really gives us a wallop.
But both at the same time? Oy. I don’t care what you call them, when they both show up on our doorstep in the same week, we’re in for it.
And they both showed up on Tuesday.
Seattle is digging out from the first part of this storm’s one-two punch (the second part is due this evening). Around the Sound, trees came down—crushing vehicles and homes, killing two locals—and heavy limbs snapped off in the 60mph gusts, taking down electrical lines and leaving half a million without power for days; some are still in the dark.
We were without power for about three days—spared a third night in the dark when our power came back on late Thursday—and that is very unusual for our neighborhood. In our 25+ years here in this house, the longest power outage has been maybe fourteen hours, so spending fifty-plus hours without power, heat, and plentiful hot water was a definite outlier. Those who regularly experience long outages are better prepared than we were, with their generators and stocked-to-the-rafters pantries, but even so, we fared pretty well.
Heat was my major concern, as our supply of firewood was low at the start, and our fireplace is not very efficient. Still, it kept the front of the house at 60°F (15C) while the bedrooms were barely at 50°F (10C). It was smoky, to be sure, and by the end of the ordeal I felt like a brisket burnt end, but it was (obviously) survivable.
Second concern was food. Our fridge kept its cool, so we lost little by way of fresh food stores, but we did learn the extreme limitations of our little butane single-burner camp stove. It’s great if I want to char peppers outside, but it really goes through the fuel if you want to actually cook a meal (even if it’s tea and scrambled eggs). I had some emergency supply chests downstairs, but we didn’t have to break out the MREs (whew!).
Third on our list was power, to keep our phones charged (so we could stay in touch with neighbors and keep abreast of the power company’s restoration work) and to keep some decent light for the long November nights (it’s dark by 6PM). We have a collection of little power banks (including some solar-charged banks), but nothing like a generator or something that can run a refrigerator. We burned through them all by the last evening; we had options, like driving around in the car to charge our phones, but didn’t need to go that far.
I mention all of this because it brought into sharp focus just how dependent we are on our infrastructure and our technology. After three days, we were low on resources and scrambling for solutions. Some friends decamped and went to hotels. Some went to friends’ homes for some solace and warmth. But not everyone can (or is willing to) take advantage of such options. If we, who were relatively prepared (and frankly, for shorter outages, we’d have been just fine) were this uncomfortable and cold, I can only imagine how those with fewer resources at hand got through it (or are still going through it).
So my point (and I do have one) is this: if you haven’t already, give some thought to how you will manage a prolonged outage, be it of power, internet, water, etc. With the changing climate causing weather to become more extreme with each passing year, and with our infrastructure showing its cracks and our dependence on tech growing more integrated, such outages and their effects will become more frequent and more intense. We don’t have to look far to see situations where weather has damaged infrastructure so badly that it can take weeks (or months) for utilities to come back online. Just take Hurricane Helene is a case in point; parts of North Carolina still don’t have safe drinking water.
Make plans. Talk to your neighbors and friends. Compare notes. Learn what works and what doesn’t. Think about how you’d manage heating and food, primarily, but make sure your heating solution is safe (no hibachis in the house, please), and how you would prepare food for your family. Ensuring you have sufficient power supplies for tech should be next on the list, as hardly any of us still have landlines, and we get so much of our needed info from the internet that it’s really more important than ever.
walking dawn-dewed streets
amid memories of
the night’s groaning wind
branches and twigs
bony remnants
cast around
leeward silhouettes
of gold leaf and rusted needles
for some it is
the Moon’s occultation of Saturn or
the needle strikes of Perseids across a spangled sky
that speeds their heart
but for me it is
a late summer evening when
the world is parchment
I step out onto the front stoop while the wind
swollen with the scent of moisture
shakes out the carpets of August
sending heat-baked dust over distant hills
the stars take the night off as
the clouds drop down
so close I can
smell them touch them feel them seeping into my skin and
the air thicks with promise until
a flash sparks fire miles above
lighting the jumbled sky
I know it is coming I know the treat is coming
the respite from dry weeks sere days withered leaves but
it takes its time walking not running toward my eagerness
teasing me with coming attractions so mesmerizing that
when the rain begins I am surprised
it is so strong so hard so heavy that
my mind wonders about the terminal velocity of a raindrop the size of a pea and
if the drops fall as spheres or are deformed by their earthward plunge and
bang
the storm is here has crossed the ridge is overhead
its flares of light draw inward focus concentrate spin themselves into jagged threads
neighbors come out from barbecues and movie nights to
look up
exclaim at the brilliance
gasp at claps that slap their cheeks
laughing in sheer childish joy at the power of the moment and
in that moment the magic of our world ushers us into its realm
we feel a part of it enjoy it for exactly what it is
the raw audacity of it the confidence as if nothing can stand against it and survive
it is intoxicating and I am drunk with it all
happily consumed and consuming
a tiny mote in the vastness
just me
alone on the front stoop
watching nature play its greatest anthem while
I hum along with the familiar tune
that’s what does it
for me
Summers in my tween years were not pleasant. Most of this was due to the standard tween-centric issues—the struggle for self-definition, the complete lack of agency, the all-too-natural desire to take the bit in one’s teeth and reject all elder pressure to conform—but there was one recurring event that made those summers even less pleasant: trips to the Iron Range of northern Minnesota.
My stepmom came from the Iron Range—north of Duluth, the little town of Gilbert, MN—and for a few years we trekked out there from my hometown north of San Francisco to visit her relations (of which there were many). I remember three trips; the first was by airplane, and the next two were (sadly) by car.
It’s not that it was a total misery from start to finish, but at that age I’d not yet learned to appreciate the excitement and exploratory thrill of travel. The road trips, in particular, were little more than a purgatory of boredom which I suffered in the station wagon’s “way back” listening to one of the three 8-track cassettes I had been allowed to bring. My folks would turn off the front speakers and I would listen to Buffy Sainte-Marie or Simon & Garfunkel or Quadrophenia on an eternal loop. In short, I was dour, mopey, and generally about as much fun to have along as an overfilled suitcase with a broken wheel. But still, each trip had its high point (singular).
The airplane trip’s acme was when we took an actual helicopter shuttle from Marin County to the SFO airport. That was cool. On the first road trip, we stopped at Mount Rushmore. Definite high point.
The second road trip—our final journey—was taken under a dark star, though. We broke down in Idaho, dealt with locusts and hailstorms through the Dakotas, and then hit a deer somewhere north of Duluth (it was then I learned that, for insurance purposes in Minnesota, deer were considered “falling objects” and hitting one was covered, which was good for my folks, as our Vista Cruiser took a serious beating).
But that trip had a high point, too. By this time, I’d learned some of the names of the myriad relations we visited with, and even enjoyed the company of some of the kids my age. One night, staying in a relative’s cabin by a lake (don’t ask me which one . . . they have thousands, you know), we went out for a walk, and it was on that walk that I saw three new things at once: fireflies, foxfire, and the aurora borealis.
I’d camped a lot as a kid. I’d backpacked through the Point Reyes National Park, bushwhacked my way through the hills behind my home, and ridden my bike up the coast, staying in campgrounds along the way (hey, it was a different time, back then). But never, ever, had I seen anything that naturally glowed in the dark, much less three things in one night. The auroras were the most difficult to see, given the trees and all, but from the south edge of the lake we got a view of them. I remember green ribbons, vague and hazy, sliding above the treetops in the distant north on that short but moonless summer night.
I’d always wanted to see them again, except with a better view.
This weekend, I got my wish.
Seattle was “in the zone” for auroras formed by the recent solar storm and CMEs that blasted our way, and while anything astronomical—be it meteor showers or eclipses or auroras—will, nineteen times out of twenty, be met with cloudy skies, leaving us skunked, this was not one of those times.
I became aware of something going on when, near midnight, as I was drifting off to sleep, I heard voices out on the street. Then I got a text from my neighbor, alerting me to the show above. Then a second text: “They’re getting brighter!”
We got out of bed, threw on robes and such, and ventured out into the dark. About half of the block was standing out in the center of the cul-de-sac, in their PJs, staring upward and exclaiming in what I’d have to call “stage whispers,” where they wanted to be quiet but couldn’t. Naturally, I couldn’t see anything right away, but after twenty minutes or so the auroras became clear. Pinks, greens, purples, and blues, in ribbons and vortices and swirls, covered the sky from the northern treetops to the sky’s zenith. People were using their phones—much more sensitive to the faint light and colors than our eyes—but I preferred to view them unaided. What surprised me, aside from the variety of colors, was how swiftly they moved, eddying with the currents of magnetic force, snaking across the heavens.
It was a priceless time, a brief hour or two, absolutely filled with wonder, spent amongst friends and neighbors.
I’m sure there were some stiff necks the next morning, but even so, some of us went out the next evening hoping to see a repeat performance (alas, it was not meant to be). I think I prefer it that way, though. It was a one-off, an isolated treat, and is all the more precious because of its singular nature.
My eyes were unable to see the truly spectacular show than did others who were farther from the city lights, but I’ll file it away, that memory, and replay it now and again, as I have that night of the fireflies and foxfire.
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 