Timber (Old Site)

Last year we had “the storm of the century” here in lovely Washington state. It was a night that I am likely to always remember. A night when two friends and I decided that a little wind wasn’t going to stop us from seeing White Christmas in downtown Seattle. A night in which we later escaped the city over I-90 with waves from Lake Washington crashing around my car. A night of dodging fallen trees and stumps to get home. I remember how my power went out mere minutes after I walked in the front door, and watching blue “explosions” throughout hours as more and more households went into the dark. That night led to many people in the Puget Sound area being without power for a stretch of days. I remember the aftermath the next day, and watched my neighbors re-erect fences for months to come. I remember that night, thinking how very lucky I was that none of the huge trees around my house decided to fall. Mostly, I remember thinking that I was glad this was a “storm of the century” and hoped that it wouldn’t repeat itself in my lifetime. Well, that was just the dramatic beginning of a very fun winter season for us last year.

Fast forward about 10 months after the “storm of the century”, and Washington is welcoming in another wind storm. Granted, this one is supposed to be at about a level 7, whereas last year’s was a level 10... but, still it is estimated that there will be several power outages and more fallen trees. “Our house will be fine,” thought I. “If any of our trees were going to come down, surely it would have happened in the ‘storm of the century’ last year.”

Um, no... I came home on Thursday night to flashing clocks all over my house. They were all flashing 12:19, which told me that the power had just come back on a few minutes earlier. Boone was whining, so I started to take him outside... and that is when I saw the tree. It was hanging precariously over our fence, swinging back and forth. The tree is now resting, more stable, over our fence. It covers most of the length of our backyard and is resting on the edge of one of our cedar trees. Andy and I are very sad because it was our favorite tree to look at. Not only did it have beautiful leaves, but it was a favorite tree of the squirrels - we would watch them running up, down, and over the branches. Alas, now we have to figure out how to get rid of the thing before it takes down our fence for good.

On the bright side, the tree deposited at least 25 good size branches in the yard for Boone’s enjoyment. We hope that this storm was not an omen for more to come. I mean, the news people have already coined last year’s as “the storm of the century”. It wouldn’t due to have two of those a year apart, right? Are you listening Mother Nature?