Post-Irma

Photo by Georgia Power Company

Well that was . . . interesting.  Irma passed through Atlanta yesterday with tropical-storm winds and several inches of rain, and seemed to really whip itself up into a fury between the hours of 3:00 and 7:00 p.m.  Treetops were whipping back and forth and the rain was coming down in sheets during those hours, and all I could do was listen to the news, watch out the window, and hope for the best.

Which surprisingly seemed to work.  I didn't lose power or cable or internet connectivity, even as the people on t.v. were reporting on tens of thousands of others in the state without power and showing live coverage of fallen trees mere blocks away from my house (see above).

The roof held, no trees came down on my house, and I was able to enjoy the comfort of electric lights all day.  We survived the hurricane.

Frequently during the day, but especially between those critical hours of 3 and 7, I thought about the line in Alejandro Iñárritu’s film The Revenant, when the spirit of Leonardo DiCaprio's Pawnee wife whispers to him, “The wind cannot defeat a tree with strong roots. If you look at its branches, you swear it will fall. But if you watch the trunk, you see its stability.”

I tried to stay focused on the trunk.