Stormin' Mother
There's an old saw about not wanting too hard for something lest you might get what you asked for, and that might apply to those of us who have been begging for rain. Until last week, we were more than a half-foot below normal in the seasonal rainfall scheme of things, but after a series of storms that struck over the past week, we are actually now above normal. The rain came in buckets, accompanied by winds clocked at over 70 miles per hour. Hangar doors were ripped off, trees were knocked down, and some folks got killed in their bed.
I braved the elements on Saturday to make the 227-mile drive to Mill Valley to finish the final polishing on my collaborative divorce television program. A lot of people, even on this next-to-the-last weekend before Christmas, had wisely chosen to stay home, or were already in the malls, because the highways were mostly uncluttered. There was standing water in some places, and when the gusts side-struck the car, it was a challenge to stay earthbound.
There was a break in the meteorological action on Sunday morning, and I took advantage of the relative clemency to walk down through one of my favorite places of worship, Tennessee Valley, to the ocean. The Pacific was in frothy tumult, with waves rising twenty feet pounding themselves onto the beach, their backwash smashing into successors, creating towers of spume. The beach was gone, actually, or inundated; to reappear some time when the wave action quiets itself.
I was quite content to stand above the storm-'n-drain theatrics, but some idiot -- or so he appeared -- was dancing about in the wash and the waves, sporting a manic grin on his face large enough to catch a turtle. Either he had found god or god hadn't yet found him, but the water was frigid and the undertow fierce, so maybe he knew what he was doing and maybe he didn't. Darwin gets the pick of the litter.
A number of years ago, 'round Christmas time, I'd climbed one of the cliffs to perch by a long-deserted World War II artillery bunker, a hunnert feet above the beach. It wasn't particularly storming at the time, but the winter weather made the sea fiercer than normal. A couple with a dog walked down to the beach. The dog went swimming and got caught in the riptide. The man went in after the dog and got caught. The woman went in after the man and got caught. Somehow, all three made it back to the beach, but for several long moments it was very dicey.
Another time on the beach, I saw a young woman lying nude on a towel having her picture taken. Suddenly a rogue wave rolled in and over her. No danger, but the photography was done for the day.
Another time, I warned a young mother about the danger of the tides and the three young children she was watching playing in the surf. She had turned to give me a dismissive comment when a rogue wave came up and soaked her; as far as I know, the children survived.
Nature is an unforgiving Mother, or perhaps a better word would be amoral. She strips leaves from trees, moves river beds, forces evacuations. She knocks out electricity at inconvenient moments that stretch into days. The flip side is that we lost power Saturday night during the absolutely final tweak of the program, and adjourned from the edit room to a delightful candlelight dinner, while the power crews sawed and spliced. By the time we were done, they were done, and shortly, so was the program.
The weather geeks, who got today's six- and twelve-hour forecasts wrong by a country mile, say that El Nino and a stalled Pacific weather system will be pouring rain and whoosh across our way for the next ten days or so. This provides plenty of discussion fodder, but the smarter flora know that the only thing that matters is what seeps through the ground to their roots.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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