The violence of ice

Seeing the pictures of the ice storm reminds me of what happened to me 10 years ago.

It was October 1997. I was attending AQ. An aging Joe Piscepo hadn't been heard from in a decade. Mom and I had just returned from a jolly jaunt in the Greater DC area.

We arrived home and mom & dad were in bed. It was round about midnight. I started to hear straining & cracking coming from outside. I flipped on the porch light and had a look. What I saw horrified me.

Ice was coating everything. This giant tree I'd watched grow from a twig was losing branches before my eyes. They were snapping and cracking and falling to the earth. Those that hadn't were drooping mournfully.

I knocked on my parents' door and told my mom the branches were all breaking off the tree. They didn't seem to mind. After all, it was late. They were sleeping. And what could they do? What could I do? I felt tormented as my tree gave up its life and there wasn't a thing I could do about it. There was no way to save it.

The next morning I looked out to survey the damage. It broke my heart to see the state it was in. Surely, I knew, this was the end for my old friend. It was diseased anyway, and my dad was planning its demise well ahead of this storm. This was surely the end.

I am comforted today to know what I have read. The earth is alive, a living thing, with a soul. Along with all of us, it will be resurrected into its perfect form, a lush paradise as the Garden of Eden, and maybe I'll see my tree again. It's a shame we couldn't be sealed.

The earth is alive and very much has a soul and tries so hard to be good, to spring forth soaring trees and dainty flowers, to house jellyfish & tigers & vultures. But its having an increasingly more difficult time doing so. Dang, what a downer.