The Storm
Safe in the knowledge that the there were no trees towering above my small house in the mountain, I fell into a fitful sleep beside my little one, the sound of the ferocious wind penetrating my dreams. In my minds eye I could see the silhouettes of the towering mountain ash trees against the dark night sky, swaying from side to side like dancers, limbs waving towards the heavens. It took me back to my childhood, lying on the back seat of my dad’s station wagon late at night, watching the canopy whizz by as we made our way home from Peter and Jennys place. My first link to the mountains that I now feel so deeply connected to. I thought of Jenny, surrounded by the love of her daughters as she lay, her body fighting a battle with the same cancer that took Peter some years ago. I could not tell if the regular heavy thuds I could feel were the trees toppling or my own heartbeat. Before dawn broke as the wind still raged, lying below my sleeping babe I wondered if my friends were safe. I flicked the light switch, but all remained dark as I had expected. I reached for my phone which I had kept by my side all night, just in case, and as I enabled it’s internet connection my phone buzzed and buzzed and buzzed, hundreds of alerts for fallen trees and damaged houses, floods and friends in need. The often conflicting ease of connection suddenly filled me with gratitude. As I joined the community in this pre-dawn online space the adrenalin flowed through my body as my screen was filled with story after story of fear and despair, families huddled together listening to the trees falling around them, crashing through houses, blocking the roads to loved ones, the roads to safety. It was too dark for images, but the sounds I could hear and the sense of terror that rippled through was enough to know that nothing was ok. The roads were blocked, the power was out, the storm was still raging. We were at the mercy of the weather.
I ran through the list of friends who I knew could be in danger, whose houses are overhung by the forest, checking in on them where I could, everyone seemed to have survived. A comment from one of my closest friends sent me into action, stranded in her car all night between fallen trees and power lines Kate was the face of bravery and composure, an emergency nurse who has years of practice at holding it together. She was still out there amongst the storm. It must be bad out there if there was no way to get home from Kalorama, less than 5km away. I gently sang to my sleeping babe, rousing him from his dreams as I reached out to her, hoping the roads would be clear between our houses so that I could hold her children close while her husband Simon worked his way towards her through the debris strewn roads. When he arrived at my door the panic and exhaustion on his face was contagious. He handed me his daughters, trusting me to keep them safe while he and James set out to reach Kate. “Head to our house, the generator is on, it’s warm there. We’ll be back soon.”
It was now that I should have taken a moment to breathe, to find a sense of calm before moving forward into this day that remained profoundly unknown and full of danger. But instead, I rushed to dress my children in as many layers as they would tolerate then bundled all 4 of my charges into the car, dashing back inside to gather supplies by torchlight. What do you take with you at a time like this? I rummaged through the kitchen, a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, a sack of potatoes and a raw chicken, I left the pumpkin behind thinking we could live without it. Now I can laugh about this, the impracticalities of this uncooked roast dinner in the midst of an emergency, but it made perfect sense at the time, knowing everyone would need to be fed.
I weaved the car slowly between fallen branches and under drooping powerlines, aware of the towering gums on either side of the road and the four tiny children strapped safely in the back of the car.
I sighed with relief as we walked into the warm, well lit house and as the children settled into play, seemingly unaware of the magnitude of the situation, I began the task of making breakfast. I felt ok, I felt safe and confident that we would get through, that Kate, Simon and James would be back to join us over pancakes and coffee shortly… I made the pancakes and the coffee, the children ate, they played, made cards for Kate and set her up a warm little nest with flowers and foot spa for when she returned. I drank the coffee and tidied the kitchen, emptied the dirty dishes out of the dish washer and scrubbed them clean. I swept the floors and prepared scrambled eggs, got more coffee ready, and noticed how fast my heart was beating. As I kept returning to glance at my phone and check for messages from friends I noticed the connection taking longer and longer to load. The internet was down. The children played. I called my mum for a chat, it was good to hear her voice, but my heart beat faster still upon recognizing my own panic. It had been nearly two hours since waving goodbye to Simon and James. They should be back by now. I pushed panicked thoughts from my mind. It would all be ok. There was no other option.
As the phone network crumbled and all reception began to drop out I made a phone call to James. It wouldn’t connect. I called Simon, again, I couldn’t connect. But then a message came through “We’ve got her. We’ll be back in ten.”
Known by locals as “The Tourist Road”, our main route on and off our mountain home, strewn with mountain ash for kilometers.
I set the coffee back on the stove, reassured the children that their parents were on the way home, rummaged in the fridge to find some sliced mushrooms and set to work making a warm breakfast…
The day passed in time, trying to get messages out and in, some heading out with chainsaws to do what they could, others staying behind, trying to keep things calm and quiet to reassure the children. Checking in on the neighbours, filling thermoses, articulating the destruction that we had seen to the elders of our street who weren’t yet aware of the magnitude. A big pot of chicken soup simmering on the gas stove at Simon and Kate’s. Stories trickling through of houses lost, of roads blocked, of dramatic change. A constant undercurrent of panic, of not knowing.
To articulate the timing of events of the next few days isn’t possible, the memories are a blur and a flurry, no doubt the effect of trauma. We took our children off the mountain, navigating the only road that had been cleared enough to travel, to spend the days with their grandparents away from the fallen giants while we returned home to do what we could, a big chainsaw was purchased, a road cleared, weaving over, under and around giant Mountain Ash trees resting atop cars and houses, stacking a few precious possessions in a friends car, their home reclaimed by the forest that they love so dearly. The news that Jenny had passed away, my grief for her woven intricately through my grief for the fallen trees, the tears falling, my first link to these mountains gone. An ambulance trip to hospital for my toddler, the smoke of the candles, the bitter cold of the air bringing on a night of asthma. Soup, meals, muffins, phone calls – all in a whirlwind. What more could we do?
My eyes are not yet used to the sparse canopy where previously the sky could only be seen in snatches, they are not used to the new views of the reservoir, where before the view was dense forest. Stands of broken trunks of mighty mountain ash trees, snapped like twigs below the fury of the storm. The cavernous hollows where intricate weavings of roots as big as cars were pulled clear from under the ground. The beautiful homes, sheered clean in half by the trees we choose to live amongst, the chaotic display of the contents reminiscent of a giant’s dolls house after play. As I move through the mountains my eyes are constantly wandering up, moving from the road to the canopy, checking for branches and boughs hanging above us. I feel the need to be in amongst the fallen trees but I am scared to venture into the forest. I’m scared of the grief that I know will wash over me, the grief for our beautiful world. I’m scared of this newfound feeling of my own fragility in my humanity. I am nothing compared to mother nature. I am at her mercy.
We choose to live in this place of beauty, we watch the seasons travel with the flocks of black cockatoos and the songs of the lyrebirds, we relish the occasional winter snow and hungrily devour the sweet cool air as we return to our mountain home after a hot day in the suburbs. But in making that choice, we also surrender to the forests, the gullies, the blistering hot winds and the possibility that in a night, in a day, in a heartbeat, our beautiful mountain home can change. This time, no human lives were lost, but next time?
“Once this storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through...how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, wether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person you walked in.”
Haruki Murakami
