The storm blew through during the night. I walked through the woods south of Stone Mountain to see what had happened.
Small twigs and big limbs were down everywhere. A few trees had fallen, but this wasn’t a catastrophic storm.
The forecasters had said 60 mph winds were possible, but the highest gust measured at the Atlanta airport was 38 mph. My old friends in Galveston would smile, thinking that’s not much of a blow.
The volume of brush on the ground was a reminder that the forest is constantly renewing itself. Weaker and diseased limbs come down. New growth will take advantage of the sunlight that comes through the newly opened spaces in the canopy. This storm was just part of the cycle.
The other remarkable thing about the walk was the sound. Earlier in the week, the forest had been still, dry and quiet. But as the poet said:
Stones in the throat make the hill burn sing.
Every little rill coming off Stone Mountain was a torrent running over granite stones. It’s music to me: not as loud as a rock concert, but getting there.
• Source: The line is from Norman MacCaig’s poem “A noise of stumbles” in The Poems of Norman MacCaig; Edinburgh: Polygon, 2005, p. 156.
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