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Right now, it is a long time ago and I am very young.
I am standing just outside my house. The day is bright and sunny. My home is surrounded on all sides by trees, evergreen and deciduous, reaching into the sky, leaving the world more green than blue.
The wind whistles a song that grows in volume. The leaves rustle, and I watch the trees bend, and bend, and bend- but they don't break.
"What if they do? What if the trees break and crush my house and kill my family?" I think.
The wind slows. The trees straighten up in their chairs. I go inside. I don't say anything.
Time passes.
Suddenly, it's 2025. I'm talking to a friend from a nearby city in a voice call. It's getting late, and it's autumn, and it's raining, so the window is pitch black.
Mid-sentence, the power cuts out. I open my phone, and inform my friend as much in a text chat. It's a little funny, mostly bothersome, but ultimately there are many ways to talk to your friends.
I go upstairs. The rain pours. The house is dark, and my family lights candles. The warm light reminds me of childhood, power outages and snowy nights. The wind blows outside, tapping gently on the windows.
I walk around the kitchen just to move, texting my friend and watching the candles flicker. The wind is picking up.
Sinbad hasn't seen a lit candle this close before. He seems determined to learn what fire is the hard way, but I pick him up and deposit him back on the floor before he has the chance. The wind bangs on the roof.
Then something happens.
There's a crash, like thunder, but it isn't, because it keeps going, and with a THUD the whole world shakes for a moment.
My family gathers. "Are you okay?" "What was that?" "I'm okay." "I think it was a tree falling." "Did it come from behind the house?"
We go to the back door, phone flashlights in hand. The rain falls like frozen needles. The leaves tremble in the wind. The trees are thick back here. We don't see anything.
We go to the front.
The porch is completely blocked by dense leaves. The wind howls like a wolf. She bursts through the fallen tree into the house and shakes off her fur, cold and wet.
"Where's my flashlight?" "Is it on the counter?" "It's over here." "Thanks."
Dad goes outside. He comes back, and he's cold and wet too, now. His boots are muddy and there's bits of leaves everywhere.
"The tree behind the shed fell. The shed is completely crushed. It landed on the roof of the truck, it might be totalled. Station wagon seems okay. I can't tell if there's roof damage. It took out the gutter, and the power lines. Don't go out there, there could be live power lines still tangled in the tree."
He holds out his arms. "The trunk is this big at the bottom. I don't know what we're gonna do."
We go to sleep.
We wake up.
In daylight, we can see through the windows on the front side of the house. The view is completely blocked by leaves. Green and yellow, speckled with brown, shimmery wet with rain.
I send my teachers emails explaining what happened, and my plans to attend my online classes from the library if need be. They respond with kindness and understanding, and things feel a little less impossible.
With data and my phone's waning battery, I search "pacific northwest windstorms". Wikipedia has provided a helpful list.
1862. 1880. 1921. 1934. 1962. 1981. 1993. 1995. 2002. 2006. 2007. 2010. 2014. 2015. 2021. 2024.
I look at the windows, obscured by leaves.
I think of bending trees and a root bulb the size of a car ripped from the earth like a heart from a ribcage.
I think of Texas and snowstorms. I think of a senator, his fleeing a banshee's shriek for the people he was elected to serve.
I think of rising temperatures, of deserts growing larger. Of wildfires in California and Australia.
I think of wavy polar vortexes and collapsing ocean currents. Shrinking ice caps and rising water and dying coral reefs.
Time passes. Less, this time. Puget Sound Energy gives us the all clear to leave the house, and restores our power. The tree eats Dad's chainsaw, and he buys a better one. My brother and I go out with loppers and hack off the small branches at the top of the tree, and peel away ivy from where it burrows into the bark. An uncle I don't see often lends us his truck to carry it all. The front yard is cleared, giving us a better view of the damage. The truck isn't actually totalled, despite the massive dent in the hood and the shattered windshield. The shed is trashed but the lawn mower and Christmas tree stand are recovered easily. The gutter has been torn off but the roof is almost entirely unharmed- only a single branch pierced the overhang, a wooden arrow sticking clean through.
I think of people less fortunate than I.
And of people with power.
The wind blows, and the remaining trees bend, and bend, and bend, but do not break.
This piece was written for a class. The prompt was to "select a natural element. Write 2 pages that return to that element again and again". I went into this intending to write something nice about rain, but recent experiences changed the tone.