Rain and Falling Trees

"The elements have come to destroy us..." (just for Clip, who will understand)

We finally got rain today. We've been very lucky that we're not as dry as Texas and some of the western states, but things have been dry. Even going down the driveway has raised a cloud of good old red Mississippi dirt.

We didn't get a huge amount of water, but another wave of the front is supposed to move through. At least now maybe we'll be able to breathe and the danger of fire will be suppressed. For some reason, every fool in the free world decides to burn when we haven't had rain for a long time. I don't exactly understand their reasoning. Perhaps there's no reasoning to understand.

Before the rains, there was a huge and powerful wind. It came up suddenly, and the trees were swirling in those scary, tornado-like circles like inverted wind-driven pendulums. It was the kind of wind that makes me feel as if I might be able to spread my arms out and fly. Of course, if that actually happened, I don't guess it would be like my childhood dreams of flight and would probably, at some point, involve smacking into something immobile.

Since Katrina, we've had lots of trees die from hidden damage or come down, so I was anxiously going from door to door and watching the skyline. Isn't it funny what sorts of irrational things you do in situations like that? Really, I have to laugh at myself. What was I going to do if a tree DID fall toward the house? Use my superpowers to make it go away? Catch it?

Anyway, I did pace and fret, and I stepped outside to secure a garbage can on the south porch. As I was tinkering with it, I heard a huge thud and saw a movement from the corner of my eye. The giant dead pecan tree in my front yard had fallen.

It was nothing more than a leafless trunk, and at some point this summer it was going to be removed anyway, but I have many childhood memories of that tree and have to admit that I was somewhat sorry to see it fall. That pecan, one of three big ones in the front yard, was our monkey swing tree. My two cousins and I spent hours and hours entertaining ourselves with the simple wooden round and rope swings that hung from the strong limbs of that tree. I'll never forget being at the top of the swing arc and having the rope break. I was actually airborne that time; unfortunately, the landing pretty much knocked me out.

The tree I remember has been gone a long time, though. It started dying when I was in college, and pieces of it have been falling for years. Today's wind didn't really destroy my memory tree. I'll always remember all the games and injuries my cousins and I garnered playing there. Tomorrow or the next day when the rain clears, Dad and I will use the tractor to remove the husk. The memory will stay.