Emerging from your house the morning after a hurricane is like stepping into an alternate universe. The world is almost the same. The sky is blue and the sun is shining. Birds and squirrels chirp and chitter. A soft breeze blows. But so much else is wrong. The great hulking arms of trees are no longer suspended above you but lie scattered in the road or on top of your house. Some giants fall in their entirety, unable to cling to soil now sodden and unsteady. Their massive root systems reach into the air like petrified octopi. Floodwaters hide the streets you know—the signs naming them lean at unnatural angles as if craning to see where the asphalt has gone. Traffic lights are missing, and the ones that remain are dark. There is no power. There is no gas. For some, in a cruel act of irony, there is no water. Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.1
Helene and Milton sound like two old retirees yelling at clouds. My great-uncle was named Milton. Uncle Milty, we called him. At the end of his life, he was a diabetic with absolutely no regard for the demands of the disease. He ate whatever he wanted. My grandmother—his sister—used to give him hell for it. If my Geegee were still here, she would have berated this hurricane with the same fervor. But storms don’t listen any more than brothers do. And those of us with names more befitting of the 21st century are the ones yelling at clouds now.
Just as hurricanes build at sea, here on land we swell with anxiety. For days before a storm hits, we prepare. We fill sandbags and gas tanks. We buy food that doesn’t need electricity to store or prepare. We bring our patio furniture inside. We put flashlights in reach for the inevitable blackout. We charge our devices. When there is nothing left to do, we wait. Two storms intensify—one at sea, one in our stomach. We check the forecast. We wait.
As the storm approaches, the skies darken. It looks no different than your average summer thunderstorm, but the tension is palpable. The wind and rain are light at first. My dad and I take bets on when the power will go out. The darker it gets, the harder the wind blows. These things always seem to peak in the dead of night.
Sustained hurricane-force winds are a shout emerging from a throat capable of no more than a whisper. Winds and screams are invisible things, their damage only realized by the effect they have on others. In the dim moonlight, the black shadows of branches scatter, darkness flailing against darkness. The limbs of live oaks in my yard, already old and massive when I moved in nearly fifteen years ago, are thrown around like a child’s plaything. I sit on my enclosed porch and listen to the whisper-scream, letting it drown out the thoughts in my head. The gusts are so loud that even the sustained winds sound quiet. Nothing is still, but it feels that way. And then the next gust comes, raging like the ghost of an ancient beast reminding you of the magic that used to roam this world.
I was born and raised in Pinellas County. I currently live in the city of Clearwater, having moved here when I was a teenager, but I spent my childhood in Safety Harbor. Until the Spanish expeditions of the 1500s, Safety Harbor was the cultural capital of the Tocobaga tribe. Like many other tribes, the Tocobaga were decimated by European disease. The remaining survivors were displaced by raids from the Creek and Yamasee from the north. By the 18th century, the Tocobaga disappeared from the historical record, but their spirits never left.
The Tocobaga built large mounds of shells and sand all over Tampa Bay for use as homes, temples, and burial grounds. Most were destroyed during the development boom of the mid-20th century, but some remain, and they provide folklore as well as history. Like others who have spent their lives in this area, I grew up hearing about the Indian blessing that kept our city safe from hurricanes. Legend has it that the Tocobagan chiefs blessed the mounds to prevent major storm damage. Every summer, when the hurricanes came, they always seemed to veer north or south at the last minute, sparing us from the worst. My mom would thank the Native spirits for protecting us. It became a ritual for me, too.
The one-two punch of Helene and Milton brought destruction this area hasn’t seen in a century. I’ve never seen anything like it. And still, it could have been worse. It’s a difficult fact to wrap my mind around. Some people lost everything. Some died. The beaches look like war zones, with buildings broken and buried in sand. Some of the waterways are still cresting, one week later. Some people still don’t have power. Gas is back in the county now, but I sat for three hours one day and four the next to fill up cans for my generator. Red tide is blooming off the coast, and floodwaters have brought flesh-eating bacteria. The roof of Tropicana Field hangs in tatters. Heaps of debris sit outside now-empty homes.
We’re exhausted. We’re all just so tired. And still, there’s more to do.
I could fill this whole essay with examples of the unthinkable. And yet, it could have been worse had Milton hit us directly. Logically, I know there is no Indian blessing. There is no evidence whatsoever that the Tocobagan mounds protect this area, or even to suggest that the tribe blessed this area in any fashion. But I thank the spirits all the same. It could have been worse. It could have been so much worse.
WEEKEND POTPOURRI:
Currently on repeat:
How To Be Water, an ambient comic by Grant Snider at Incidental Comics
What colour is water? by Samantha Clark at The Life Boat
Scatterings by Rebecca Hooper at Between Two Seas
The River Rukarara by Scholastique Mukasonga
A poem:
SIXTEEN YEARS TO THE DAY ANOTHER HURRICANE REVERSES
By Nicole Cooley
the Mississippi’s course my father waits in our house beside the river and I dream my mother drowning water closing over her head in my dreams she is always dying in the too warm Gulf then pricked alive again fairy-tale spindle my friends and I text each other to describe dreams in which our mothers ask us why they’re dead New Orleans is the place around which I uselessly orbit after Katrina typing my mother’s name Missing Person Jacki Cooley into search engines sixteen years ago my daughters asked what is a hurricane’s eye what can it see then my mother was alive refusing to leave the city now I text my father how high is the water are there tornadoes phone and electric out I wish for a slick of river to spare our house while a new dream about my mother wrongly comforts she thrashes to the Gulf’s sand floor where she can’t burn or come apart
From “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Really appreciate this piece so much for what you express and how