Pine in the Prevailing Winds

One piece of basic advice for writers of novels is to use all five senses to stage a scene. The reader needs to see it, feel it, hear it, taste it and smell it. As you can imagine, the last two of these are sometimes the most difficult to set up. And even if you can, you might not want to. Yeah, sure, it's great if the fence along the lane smells of honeysuckle vine. But I'm not so quick to say, "the odor of left-over pizza and old gym shoes waifed through her box-sized, third floor walkup apartment."

Smells are, however, very evocative. And we have a memory for them that, if calibrated like vision would be most often 20/20.

I came home the other night to a scent in the air that really brought some things back to mind. In the terrible heat and drought we're having here in Texas, a big limb from a neighbor's tree broke off and just hangs down toward the yard. Because it's not in a dangerous place and broken off pretty high, our neighbor hasn't exactly rushed out to get it down, chopped up and hauled off. He works long hours, and in this heat, who could blame him?

When I arrived home, in the darkness of an eighty-degree evening, I could smell that tree.

The scent of rotting pine is one that is not easy to get out of your nose. Once you've smelled it, it stays with you for a lifetime.

In 1989 Hurricane Hugo came through the part of South Carolina where we lived. It flattened buildings, washed away houses and either ripped the trees out of the ground or cut them off like matchsticks about 8 to 12 feet from the base.

My family was so lucky. We had a yard full of 100 ft. longleaf pines. The ones in the front fell in the first half of the storm...away from the house. When the second half came through, the winds blowing in the opposite direction took the trees in the backyard, also away from the house. Our home was safe and my family in it.

Like most survivors of natural disaster, I could write a very, very long story about what it was like. The storm itself, the immediate aftermath, the months of getting our lives back and our lingering feelings of loss and insignificance.

And I don't just know my own story. One of the things that happens in this kind of situation, is that you need to say things. It's such an overwhelming experience and you simply need to talk about it. And the only people with the patience to listen are those who went through it just like you did. I remember the stories my neighbors had to tell. I remember the words of my friends. Not only the ones who held each other for hours in the hallway as both sides of their condo blew out and everything they owned disappeared. But also the ones who packed up the kids and the dogs and evacuated to Charlotte, only to face the same storm there, while stuck in a dinky, airless motel room.

There was the guy that was barricaded under his bed, but had to pee so bad he decided to take the risk of a run to the bathroom. While he was in there, the bedroom side of the house fell down.

My friend who went out to check his shutters in the calm moments as the eye passed over could barely walk for the hundreds of birds huddled on the ground that refused to move.

And the working class hero that, tied with ropes, made his way across the roof of the hospital in the teeth of the storm to repair the emergency generator and keep the respirators running in the ICU.

One of my favorite stories was an old Charlestonian, who'd inherited a beautiful 18th century home in the oldest area of the city. He felt as if he were the guardian of this incredible piece of architectural history. So while he sent his family off to safety, he stayed to protect the house. He boarded it up and prepared it as best he could to ride out the storm. When the water started coming into the front door, he took refuge on the second story. But when the roof began tearing off, he tried to go back down. The water was already several feet deep on the ground floor. He huddled on the stairs, pondering his fate of either being washed out to sea or blown away. It was then he said, "that I realized, that I'd never really liked that house. I had never wanted it. I'd never asked for it and I didn't care what happened to it."

I think a lot of us have been there. Sometimes it takes being trapped on the stairs to make us realize what it is that we really value in our lives.

I know he repaired the house, and the last I heard, he and his family were still living there. I doubt, however, that he's changed his mind, just his perspective. Bill is always saying, "It's not where you are, it's who you're with." And people interviewed post-disaster always reiterate that as long as their family is all right, the "stuff" they lost doesn't matter.

Still, it takes time and money, hard work and sweat to get back on your feet again. And no matter how grateful you are for the second chance, there is going to be some grieving for what is gone.

I hope the people in Joplin and the other, so numerous, tornado sites of the year, the people along the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers, and the folks dealing with the devastation of the wildfires know that even after their images have left the six o'clock news, there are people out here still thinking about them, and hoping and praying for them. And if it takes the smell of rotting pine to remind us, then may a limb come down in all our neighborhoods.