a box of sirloins, it’s as if my fate is in limbo. Whether I live or die in the storm is, by all measures, a toss-up. With no confidence toward either outcome, I am left with nothing but a tense curiosity, waiting for the odds to change. Even when the tin roof above us breaks free of its hardware and disappears from sight, all I can do is stare up into the blackened sky and feel the raindrops on my face. Sometimes when the world is on fire, there’s nothing to be done but sit and warm your hands on the flames. Nearly an hour later, the wind blows itself out, the final gusts weak and forced, as though exhausted. With only cosmetic damage to our truck, Logan and I set out again for Morgan Creek Park. A scarred landscape lies between us and our destination. Trees are uprooted. Roofs of houses lay toppled, each blown into the neighboring yard like dominoes. Row crops have been laid flat. A grain silo is bent in an “L.” A confinement has lost its fence, and hogs block the road. In the distance, a barn burns, the bright orange flames licking the clouds above, thick acrid smoke darkening the sky for the second time. The scene at the park is no better. The garage doors on the main shop have all blown in. The woodchipper has blown through the door of the secondary storage building, leaving a pile of twisted metal in the service yard. A gas main has broken in the wash bay. The secondary building is without a roof, and leans at a concerning angle on its foundation. RVs have been crushed by old-growth oaks and maples, and a tent has been punctured by the upper portion of a knotted pine, leaving an odd Christmas-like scene in the middle of the campground. But there is little festivity to be found. The rest of the day is spent cutting limbs away from camping units, allowing their owners to haul them away. There is nothing to be done for the woodlands in the rest of the park. The tattered remains of the arboretum must be left for another day. It is late into the evening before the last of the campers is cut free. With a final, mournful look over what is left of a once pristine landscape, I trudge to the parking lot and drop bone-weary into the driver’s seat of my faithful Camry. A stillness hangs about the world. It is a calm stillness, as though the entire expanse of the universe is exhausted. So am I. With sawdust in my boots and crumbs in my lunchbox, I set out down winding back roads away from Morgan Creek Park, watching the last moments of the day fade to black somewhere near Palo.
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