nature – Page 3

Welcoming the storm

February 13, 2014 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

There’s a storm coming. No one around here needs to turn on the news to know this, though if they would, they’d be greeted with an unending stream of weather updates and projected snowfall totals. “Gonna be a bad one, folks,” the weatherman said a bit ago. But I knew that when I walked outside. It was the way the sun hung low in a heavy, gray sky, and how the crows and cardinals and mockingbirds sounded more panicked than joyful. It was the five deer coming out of the woods and the raccoon in the backyard, how they foraged for enough food to last them these next few days.

We are no strangers to winter storms here. Still, it is cause for some interesting scenes. There are runs on bread and milk, of course, and salt and shovels, and there must be kerosene for the lamps and wood for the fire and refills for whatever medications, an endless stream of comings and goings, stores filled with chatter—“Foot and a half, I hear,” “Already coming down in Lexington”—children flushing ice cubes and wearing their pajamas inside out as offerings to the snow gods.

It is February now. The Virginia mountains have suffered right along with the rest of the country these past months. We’ve shivered and shook and dug out, cursed the very snow gods that our children entreat to give them another day away from school. Winter is a wearying time. It gets in your bones and settles there, robbing the memory of the way green grass feels on bare feet and the sweet summer smell of honeysuckled breezes. It’s spring we want, always that. It’s fresh life rising up from what we thought was barren ground. It’s early sun and late moon. It’s the reminder that nothing is ever settled and everything is always changing.

But there’s this as well—buried beneath the scowls of having to freeze and shovel, everywhere I go is awash with an almost palpable sense of excitement. Because, you see, a storm is coming. It’s bearing down even now, gonna be a bad one, folks, I hear a foot and a half, and it may or may not already be coming down in Lexington.

We understand that sixteen inches of snow will be an inconvenience. We know the next day or two will interrupt the otherwise bedrock routine we follow every Monday through Friday. And yet a part of us always welcomes interruptions such as these, precisely because that’s what they do. They interrupt. They bring our busy world to a halt. They slow us down and let us live.

Come Thursday morning, I expect to see a world bathed in white off my front porch. I expect to put aside work and worry and play instead. I’ll build a snowman and a fort. I’ll throw snowballs and play snow football and eat snowcream. I’ll put two feet so cold they’ve gone blue by the fire and sip hot chocolate. I’ll laugh and sigh and ponder and be thankful. For a single day, I’ll be my better self.

That’s the thing about storms. We seldom welcome them, sometimes even fear them. Too often, we pray for God to keep them away. Yet they will come anyway, and to us all. For that, I am thankful. Because those storms we face wake us up from the drowse that too often falls over our souls, dimming them to a dull glow, slowly wiping away the bright shine they are meant to have.

Unfinished

June 20, 2013 by Billy Coffey 3 Comments

deer For the past three years we have vacationed on an island off the North Carolina coast. Seven days of sun and surf and all-around laziness. Most times, we exert ourselves only to the point of walking along the beach to scoop up shells and applying aloe to our sunburns. In other words, it’s perfect.

Usually around the third day I start thinking about the life I’ve left behind. The one of deadlines and must-do’s, of chores and timetables. It isn’t a longing to return to that world, never that. It’s more that growing pile of work that I know must be done, and how tall that pile is getting each day I’m away.

The emails that aren’t being answered. The chapters that aren’t getting written. The grass that isn’t being cut and the garden that isn’t being weeded and the job someone else is having to do and on and on.

Someone once told me I would know I’d become an adult when the days all melted into one eternal Monday. I don’t think that’s true. I think you know you’ve become an adult when you realize the break you take from your responsibilities isn’t really worth it, because there will be twice as much waiting for you when you get back. You realize the gray, drably life you live in isn’t much, but it’s better than none at all.

However.

This year, things have been different. And it’s all because of the little guy you see to the right of this post.

Our new neighbors moved in just a few days ago. Him, a brother, mom and dad. Squatters for the most part, though no one seems intent on kicking them out. They’ve made their home beneath a tangle of pines between the two dunes just off our balcony.

I’ve watched them since from my perch on the second floor. The four of them rise early, just before the sun. They will stretch and sniff and take in the new day with an air of thankfulness before picking at the sea oats and grass. They never overindulge, only take what they need to fill their bellies. They take care where they step, and when they move, it is always with an air of grace and confidence. After, the children will play while the parents watch, and when the air turns hot and the winds gather, they’ll bed down for the day beneath their pines. The entire process is repeated in the cool of the evening, at which point we’ll all bid them a goodnight.

That is the life of the deer outside our window. And as I’ve studied them these past four days, I’ve decided they are not inferior beings at all. In many ways, they are smarter than I am. In many others, they live better than I do.

Because I could learn to indulge myself only to the point of being full and no further, leaving a bit of joy for others to relish. And I could do a better job of navigating the slopes and ridges of my own world—using a gingerly step rather than charging through, perhaps. Or looking twice and then leaping gracefully.

I could learn to rest when the hard winds blow.

Hunker down more with my family.

And I could greet each day with an air of thankfulness, because despite the gray and drably lives we lie ourselves into believing we possess, we are surrounded by beauty and grace and wonder because those things live within us as well.

Today we rose with the sun and walked along deserted beaches laden with the spoils of low tide. We saw crab and fish and treasure. We navigated a sand bar that stretched nearly half a mile into the horizon just to find a shark tooth. We bid good morning to our neighbors as we crossed the bridge by their pines. And not once did my thoughts wander to all those unfinished things I’d left behind at home. I was too caught up in the understanding that I was unfinished, too.

Closer to our better selves

June 17, 2013 by Billy Coffey 8 Comments

photo-675 For one week a year I exchange the mountains of Virginia for the shores of North Carolina. That’s where I’m sitting right now—sheltered beneath the cover of the back deck, with a family of deer, four sand dunes, and the Atlantic all in front of me. This little island has become more than a vacation spot for my family these past years. It’s been made into a place for us all to take a deep breath from our lives. We set our trifles aside here and concentrate on the big things.

We’re not the only ones, either.

We’ve been here three days now, long enough to meet and greet the neighbors. The couple who each morning stake the plot of sand fifty yards to our right are here to celebrate their fifty-seventh wedding anniversary. Nice folks, both of them. They arrive early, just after the sun has risen, him carrying two chairs and a small umbrella while she tarries behind with a cooler full of sweet tea. There they’ll sit long into the day, staring out over the water. Few words pass between them. At some point, his right hand will stretch out and touch her left. He told me they’ve been coming here for decades, ever since their son and daughter were small. Those were the years before the troubles, he said—back before they lost their son to a motorcycle accident and before the falling out with their daughter. She’s in Oregon now, married twice and divorced once, with grandchildren neither of them have ever seen. It’s just them now, sitting on the beach with the wide ocean in front of them, holding hands.

The family to our left is an active lot. Mother, father, and three young kids. They do everything—swim and boogie board and hunt for shells. Yesterday, they managed to construct a world class sandcastle. The vast majority of these activities are the father and childrens’ to do alone. Mom spends most of her time sitting in the chair beneath a blue and yellow umbrella. She wears a scarf to cover her bald head. The doctors say her cancer is gone now, just as they said it was gone five years ago. They’ve all reached the silent conclusion the disease will be a specter that follows her for the rest of her life. She smiles and laughs often despite of that. Or, perhaps, because of it.

I could go on, tell you about the twenty-something young man in the home nearby, hiding not from a person but from a future he isn’t ready for. He spends his days kite surfing and his evenings sitting in the sand, watching the tides go out. Or I could talk about the widow who brings her husband’s German shepherd out to play in the surf every morning, or the grandpa who hikes up his jeans so he can wade into the water in search of a mystical starfish. There are a thousand stories here because there are a thousand people, and we are all different in who we are and what we do but we are also all the same. For this one week, we are all just a bit closer to our better selves. Not whole, because we’re still broken. Not at peace, because such a thing cannot truly be found this side of heaven.

But close? Yes. Close enough.

And sometimes, that’ll do. That’ll do just fine.

God’s catastrophes

April 8, 2013 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

I suppose you could say it all started for Tommy back when the river took his house. That was six years ago, more or less. Tommy can’t remember if it was six or five. Or seven.

He does remember the house was a bargain—two bedrooms, two baths, 1200 square feet. And then there was the land—ten acres of woods that thinned out right at the river’s edge. Tommy always wanted a place like that, out in the country where everything was slow and the only sounds were the coyotes and the birds.

He settled in and got used to his new life. The divorce had been tough on him (all divorces are), but now the papers were signed and he was ready to move on. Tommy fixed up his new house with some paint and new furniture. Added a deck on the back so he could sit there in the evenings with his dog and watch the water drift by. Tommy said he loved that deck. Sitting there watching that water made him realize that things will always keep moving, that the bad that might be here now will be behind you soon enough.

Tommy was there for three summers when it all happened. It began as a front coming up from the Gulf, welcome news for the farmers and their dry fields. The weatherman said the next two days would be wet ones and that we should all spend the time sharpening the blades on our lawnmowers. Tommy didn’t do that. He couldn’t sit on the deck and watch the river, so he pulled the recliner around toward the window and watched it from inside.

Watched it rain. Then pour. And then the pour became a deluge.

The weatherman said the system stalled over the mountains, churning in a big circle the kept dumping water onto the valley. It rained nonstop for those two days. We all felt like Noah.

By the end of the first day, the river was swollen. By the beginning of the second, water was spilling over the banks. By mid-day, Tommy’s house was gone.

He managed to get out the most important things—pictures of his kids, his dog, the motorcycle. The rest was soaked or swept away. Including the deck, which was soaked while it was being swept away.

Tommy thought his new life would be better than his old one. But as he stood in what was once his front yard a week later, he figured he thought wrong.

There was little doubt in his mind it was God’s doing. The Lord sent the rain, the Lord kept the rain there. The Lord watched as Tommy’s house ended up floating down the river. It was His will, Tommy thought. Had to be. Because if it wasn’t, then that meant the rain was bigger than God. Tommy hadn’t been to church since he was a boy, but he said he knew enough to know God was bigger than the rain.

He knew enough to realize as well that if God allowed all that to happen, it must have been for a reason. I think that’s what kept Tommy going in the months that followed. The insurance check arrived. He used it to buy another house, this one with no river in sight. He settled in once more, with new furniture and new paint (not a deck, though, as this house already had one). Things started looking up. Tommy considered it the start of his third life, and he was glad to be putting the first two behind him. Somewhere in the midst of all that newness, Tommy did something else. He took a drink.

He’d never held much fondness for alcohol. A beer at the ballgame and maybe a shot of liquor during poker with the guys, but nothing else. To hear him say it, Tommy still can’t explain why he decided to pick up a six-pack at the 7-11 that day. He just did. And wouldn’t you know it, the last one tasted even better than the first.

Like I said, that was six years ago. More or less. Tommy can’t remember.

And as it turned out, his third life was even worse than his previous two. He lost his job because of the drinking, which has also started to affect his health—“Can’t have a beer without a smoke,” he often says. He spends his days sitting on the sofa with his dog watching television. The Price is Right is his favorite.

I guess that’s how it goes with some people sometimes, sad as it may be.

Tommy says it’s all God’s fault for sending that stupid rain. It was a catastrophe, he says, and there’s little doubt it was.

But he’ll also say the drinking was his idea. God didn’t have anything to do with that. Which is why I think the catastrophes that God sends are ones we can overcome. It’s the ones we send upon ourselves that we crumble under.

Every season

March 28, 2013 by Billy Coffey 3 Comments

I’m standing on my front porch in the early a.m., as is my habit before starting the day. A cup of coffee and a view of the neighborhood serves as my morning news, and it’s all the news I need. The mountains and the creek are right where I left them last night. I need that assurance. It reminds me that even if the world’s a mess, the mountains and the creek are still here and so am I.

My eyes wander to the flower beds below me, and then to the green something poking up from the mulch and dirt. To me, flowers have always been like people I meet once and then again months later—I can place what they look like but can’t seem to remember their names. So ask if me if we have roses and daisies and begonias, and I’ll answer no. I will say, however, that we have red flowers and white flowers and pink flowers.

But these green things shooting up from the earth? These I know.

Tulips.

The tulips are the first spring flowers to sprout around here. Which to me makes them much more than just a plant, but a vital part of nature’s calendar. When you begin to see tulips, you know better times are at hand. No more cold, no more snow, no more gray skies and bare trees. Everything is about to be make new again.

Seeing that first tulip means I’ve made it. That I’ve survived one more long and dreary winter.

That’s how it usually is, anyway. But as I stand there staring down at this first true sign of spring, all the joy and peace I know I should be feeling isn’t there.

Because I’ve cheated, you see. These aren’t the first tulips I’ve seen this year.

The local nursery is owned by relatives of mine, Mennonites with green thumbs. They can grow anything. And thanks to the modern marvels of both science and climate controlled greenhouses, they can grow anything at any time. Even in the middle of the worst winter I could remember.

So in the middle of January and our third consecutive snowstorm, I stopped one day to say hello and buy some tulips. Things were getting pretty blah at that point, and so was I. I was tired of having to endure and scrape by. Tired of the sadness and outright heartache that winter always seems to bring.

I needed an act of defiance. A symbol of hope.

So I brought the tulips home and sat them right in front of the window. I’d stare at them as the snow fell and thumb my nose at Old Man Winter. When they died, I bought more. And then more. I’ve had tulips for about two months now in an effort to thwart the one barren and agonizing season I dread most.

It’s worked, too.

Maybe too well.

Because as I look down upon this miracle of God below me, it doesn’t seem like a miracle at all. It just seems like a tulip.

The rusty tumblers of my mind click into place and open, revealing a very important truth. I had wanted to skip a season. Winter and I have never gotten along, so I thought keeping a steady supply of spring on hand would cheer me. I was right about that. I did.

But I never considered the consequences of having those flowers by the window. I was so consumed with the now that I dismissed the later. I surrounded myself with a symbol of joy and warmth for so long that it became the same old. My tulips lost their luster not by becoming rare, but by becoming familiar.

Which is why next year I think I’ll leave them at the nursery down the road. I’ll let someone else give it a try. I will instead take the seasons as they come. I’ll revel in the sunshine while I have it and then stumble through the months of cold and gray as best as I can.

We’re not meant for perpetual joy, I think. There are seasons in the world and there are seasons in us, and each have their own purpose.

We are made for winter as much as spring. Made for tears as much as for laughter.

And we are here not just to dance, but to endure.

After the storm

November 1, 2012 by Billy Coffey 5 Comments

Now comes the hard part. At least, that’s how I see it from where I sit. Granted, where I sit is a warm home with a fire blazing. We have power, we have food, we have gas in the truck. Yes, we’re fortunate. Unlike the five million or so others who still have no power.

We all knew Sandy was coming, and I believe we’re all the better for it. My grandparents once said there were no extended weather forecasts in their day. Meteorology counted for little more than a telegraph from the next town over, or that old adage about red sky in the morning, sailor take warning. Storms back then were worse, they told me, because you didn’t really know what was coming. I think that’s true. Nowadays, at least we can set ourselves before the punch is thrown at our jaw.

Probably like you, I watched it all from the comfort of my living room. Listened as the weathermen and weatherwomen spoke of nothing like this ever happening before and how whole stretches of land would be swallowed and how many things would never be the same. And just as in every instance of oncoming doom, there was a curios sort of excitement mixed with fascination that made some do pretty stupid things. And when Sandy finally came she came just as it had been predicted, washing away and blowing away and prompting us to remember that we really aren’t the ones in charge at all, that there are bigger monsters than the ones who hide under our beds, ones more real.

And when it blew and poured we all spoke of the devastation and the fear and the utter sadness, and just after there came the stories of those who saved lives and property out of sheer heroism—the first responders, the national guardsmen, the ordinary people who were made great by extraordinary circumstances. If there is a silver lining in times such as these, I think it is the reminder that there resides in us better people than what we normally are.

Here in the mountains there was rain and wind and snow but little else. For that, we are all thankful. But my thoughts turn to my Yankee neighbors. Because as I said, now comes the hard part.

They’ve taken the punch, you see. Taken it square. And that sense of determination and the will to pick up and move on is kindling. Such a sentiment is unique to humanity and speaks of the holiness that dwells in us—we will not be beaten. We will rise again. We will be better than we were. It’s a desire that can carry us through horrible times and build bridges between ourselves and others were only chasms once were. Few things unite us more than disaster. I suppose that could be seen as both a supreme blessing and a great sadness.

The storm may be over—broken up over western New York, perhaps, or tossed back out to sea to be swallowed by the Atlantic. But even now there are darker clouds and colder winds growing. I’ve read that food is growing scarce and gasoline scarcer. Power to many places won’t be back online for a week or more. And November in New England is more akin to January most everywhere else.

In that regard I suppose the storms we face in our lives are no different than the storms we face in our hearts. In the beginning we endure them through adrenaline and determination. In the aftermath, we endure them through faith and work. And though I would never answer for you, I will say from my own experience that the after is usually worse than the during.

That is why my prayers will be with them even more now.

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