As I start writing, I can hear Band of Heathens singing “Hurricane” in my head. I was born in the south and lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast off and on for several years. The storms would roll in off the water and the raw power would thrill me. The waves would build up and slam into the seawall, throwing up huge sheets of spray. Before they dredged the channel, the shelf ran more than half a mile offshore, smooth and shallow, it made the show more spectacular. Lightning strikes were so close that light and sound were simultaneous.
I wasn’t even 3 years old when Hurricane Camile came in. No one remembers it now. People want to take about Katrina or Hugo, but then, at that time, it was Camile. The weather started rolling in days before, the northern front is a huge basket of wind and rain that sweeps ahead, moving east to west. The gust front alone will destroy the best man can offer. Driving in behind the front is the tidal surge, deceptive because before the surge, the water recedes from the shoreline, only to come back in a wall that washes inland taking out anything that resists too hard. It will pound you for hours with howling wind and rain, so much pressure in the air that breathing is hard. When the eye passes over, it feels like a blessing, you aren’t free yet, but you can breathe again. The southern wing moves from west to east, almost gentle with half the wind and lighter rains than the front.
What I remember most is the mad run to safety, when my mother realized that our shabby trailer wouldn’t survive the storm. She loaded us up in the car, four kids and a gassy hound named Boondock and we made the run. I-10 wasn’t even built yet. We rode Highway 90, the coast road, literally right on the beach with the hurricane bearing down on us. The old concrete span bridge between Mississippi and Alabama was being washed over by the high water. My mother timed our sprints as the water rushed over, we moved. I still remember the feeling of the bridge shifting under the car, rising and falling with the tidal surge.
Camile made me feel its power, the fury of her existence. The awe. I’m probably smart enough now not to throw a hurricane party on the beach with a hurricane coming in, but it’s tempting. Whenever I’m near the coast and a storm is brewing, I want to go out and meet it, just to feel that awe again.
The New Word Wars 