Usually, as I traveled across the continent, from Albuquerque to Prince Edward Island, I have attuned myself –apart from attention to driving – to the unfolding story of the landscape. Moving from the staked plains and high desert mesas of eastern New Mexico into the high plains of the Texas Panhandle – where one can see for at least 50 miles (having grown up here, little wonder that I often feel claustrophobic in an urban environment surrounded by tall buildings and a limited horizon) – then moving into the slightly undulating hills of Oklahoma that transform, by reason of glacial history, into the Flint Hills of Kansas. Then on through the Tall Grass Prairie to the hills of Missouri, valleys still showing signs of the glacial activity of the last ice age. His hills slowly morph into the beginnings of the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania (still echoing the ancient upthrusts that formed them as the continent continued to reshape itself from the breaking away from Africa), then coming down into the twists and turns of New England.
Usually the relative slowness of auto travel lets this part of Earth Story unfold slowly enough that I can take it in, savor the plot lines, observe how the humans have added (and subtracted) from the story. But this year, I became aware that for the most part I had ignored or paid little attention to an essential part of the story: the weather. Sunday evening I became aware of the storm warnings that were beginning to be heard in and around Kansas City where we had stopped. Stepping outside I could see off the southeast the gathering dark clouds that could mean a powerful cell was maturing (another memory vestige of growing up in the Panhandle, where such dark cells, especially at this of year was a signal of a fierce storm brewing with the possibility of a tornado.)
The next day, on the road from Kansas City to Indiana, we heard the devastating news of the destructive tornado that hit Joplin. All that day we were driving in the rain, sometime, as in and around St. Louis, we were buffeted about by fierce winds and pounding rain, braches and debris blown across the highway along with some hail. Earth story was no longer a benign portrait past history, but a turbulence that cared little about where and how it unleashed some of its fury.
I know that personalizing the occasional powerful dynamics of earth story, not just tornados, but earthquakes, tsunamis, drought, storm surges, flooding of major rivers tends to keep the human at the center point of the story, not always the best way to view it. Yet it is still our story too. In some instances, especially the flooding of the Mississippi, is as much the results of human attempts to control and exploit the natural flood plains and wetlands that once acted as sponges and natural relief valves. Praising creation is especially challenging in the face of these powerful demonstrations of the aliveness of Earth. It calls my attention to the choice about how I will speak the story: is chaos the beginning once again of a creative unfolding or the collapse of the beneficence I enjoy? The latter option is the prize of those who anticipate and predict the "end of the earth"; the former option requires a courage to celebrate the creative power of the Universe.
