Around 3:30 the power goes out. There are thunderstorm alerts and the sky has darkened, but there is no rain yet, at least not here. We are leaving for Woodstock in 45 minutes, and the girls suggest we leave now, with the house as dark as it is. We get ready to go and I decide to get my climb in before we leave in case it is pouring later on. I ask the girls if they would like to join me, and they say yes. By the time we get outside the wind has picked up and lightning is striking to the north, so I suggest they stay in the driveway. I run to the tree and start up the ladder. When I am halfway up I look out over the house and see a wall of rain coming up the valley. I shout to the girls that rain is coming, but it is now so windy they can’t hear me. When I reach my perch at forty feet, the rain is only a few hundred yards behind the house—and that’s when the winds hit.
I’ve been in the tree in strong winds many times before—including in blizzards—but I’ve never seen anything like this. It hits all at once and suddenly the branches around me are lifting and flailing until I can no longer see through or past them at the landscape, or outside of the tree at all. I am in the center of a frenzied green lashing, cut off from the world, and the trunk I’m clinging to is itself plunging around like a sapling. I think I shout something to the girls in a mixture of disbelief and exhilaration. And then the world rights itself and the rain comes. By the time I make it down torrents are driving across the field, and I’m drenched by the time I make it to the house.
Emme tells me later that watching the tree flail around she thought I was done for. “Oh well, there goes Dad.” I wondered myself for a moment if the trunk might snap. And there were places around Vermont and New Hampshire where just that happened, with power outages in 30 or so towns.
But not this tree; not this time. Instead, the gift of the unexpected; of sheer exhilaration; of raw power.
