70 bar steep fall 29.80 6mph NW Dew-point 62 Summer, a thunder storm watch until 6PM. One’s already rolled through our area.
First Quarter of the Thunder Moon
The Thunder Moon has seen its first storm even before it became gibbous. When I went downstairs today to shut off and unplug the computer, as I always do before a storm, it made me think.
In cities it is possible to live a life pretty isolated from the natural world. Yes, you get wet when it rains if you can’t drive from covered parking to covered parking, but it’s usually a short term experience. Out of the car. Dash across the parking lot or sidewalk into the shelter of a building. Yes, up here in the northland you can’t avoid the snow and the cold, but there again, unless you go outside with snowshoes or hiking boots, your exposure does not interrupt your day very much.
Out here in the exurbs, where the cities reach has become tenuous, houses have 2 acres, 5 acres, 10 acres between them. When the thunderstorm looms, it looms over you. A lightning strike on or near the house would send a surge throughout our circuitry blowing out sensitive devices. The computer holds so much of my life and work that I protect it. But, from what?
Yes. Mother nature. She’s whimsical and unpredictable. No matter what we do somewhere the river rises. Electricity coming in a storm carries a voltage of 100 million to 1 billion volts. It can reach 50,000 degrees fahrenheit. Four times as hot as the sun’s surface. A hurricane generates unbelievable power and as they intensify they endanger increasing amounts of our wealth and health as a country.
Just think back over the last couple of months. The cyclone in Burma. The earthquakes in China. The worst natural disaster in our history, Katrina, was not long ago. These events kill and or disrupt the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The earthquake in Pakistan or the Kobe earthquake in Japan. Huge, nation altering events. The tsunami in the Indian Ocean. We remember these not only for their human suffering and property loss, but because they remind us that we are not in control of the planet.
Our own little apocalypse, death, comes from the evolution of life. Life comes with a sell-by date. We are not in control even of our own lives. This is either frightening or invigorating.
I choose invigoration, so when I head downstairs to shut off the computer I say a little prayer of thanks for the miracle of mother earth and my chance for a brief stay here.