Thursday, Jan. 23, 1964
The mournful, musical sound of the rising wind as it plays its melancholy tune on the edges of my aluminum roof, indicating the approach of a storm, instills in me an indescribable feeling of wonder and contentment as Isit at home in my old cabin in the late evening. Witnessing any violent natural disturbance stirs up this strange feeling of wonder and awe in me. It must be some ingrained instinct that makes me revel in a severe rain – or snow storm, with the wind howling and the windows rattling – especially when I’m cozily ensconced within doors, like a contented bug under a nice protective chip.
I’ve never asked my psychiatrist about this mixed feeling of awe, raw pleasure and – yes, fear – that I always experience when a storm is raging. I’m afraid of what he might say. The only times when nagging fear enters the mixture is when I find myself enveloped in a rending windstorm.
Now and then a windstorm of near-hurricane-violence comes swirling in over the high ridges that enclose my hole-in-the-hills, toppling trees, some of which can easily reach my cabin, roaring and shrieking like a million demons.
A number of years ago such a storm hit my gulch in the middle of the night. A mighty roar when it struck brought me awake and ready to plunge for the protection of the big wood range in case the cabin collapsed – a dubious protection, but the best I could think of in the seconds I had for mapping my strategy for survival. But in my mind was equal to adequate planning in the emergency, my corpus was too slow in carrying out the plans. Seconds after my rude awakening, with a crash that must have made my hair stand straight up, a tall dead tree got into the act and tried to crush or scare me to death. It tore the metal door canopy and one corner off the garage, knocking it –15 degrees out of plumb, on its way to the cabin.
Luckily for me the top broke out of the snag just before it reached the cabin, the main trunk reaching just far enough to tear a section of the eaves from the roof. The broken-off top, that could have cut the cabin in two, fell backward away from the cabin as though it had been pushed back by an unseen hand. But as though to let me know that it resented being interfered with, it snapped a 6-foot length of the very tip of the tree back at the cabin, where it speared through the window above my bunk, showering me and my bed with broken glass.
In spite of this experience and other scares I’ve had in dangerous storms, I never fail to get abig thrill and a deep-seated pleasure from them. First the whispering of the wind in the pines, a phenomenon that old Oscar Beer used to call, mysteriously, the sound of the rain crow; then, as it picks up in intensity, the musical whistling sound, followed, when a real storm is near, by shrieking and moaning sounds; then, the tumbling racing black clouds and the rumble and crash of thunder, the flashing of lightning.
My friends tell me that anyone who can find any enjoyment in such a chaotic disturbance is a bit queer, and Iknow by their manner that they feel they’re being very generous with me.
Whether or not they’re right is a matter for smarter men than I am to decide. Still, there it is; the storm and I are just like that – providing the storm doesn’t so far forget itself as to jeopardize too drastically my safety and comfort.
