Being the resilient creatures that we are, we always manage somehow to transcend all of the wrongs we commit against each other. No amount of force we exhibit in all of our misguided crusades against one another is ever too excessive. While we will stop at nothing to insist on justice or retribution from those whom we feel have wronged us, despite its cost to us, there is yet one force that never fails to bring us to our collective knees and to which submission is our only recourse.

Nature, and the power she wields, is unmatched in her ability to make us stop and heed. Negotiation has never been part of her repertoire, and she makes no appointments with us for ice events that topple trees and telephone poles or the tropical maelstroms that she sends roiling across our seas. In all of history, our only choice has been to try to harness some of her boundless energy, and failing that, to respectfully stand back in awe while she has her say, waiting to put together again the pieces she so blithely scatters along her path.

In this one area of human experience, there can be no argument or appeasement. Our thickest ramparts are no match for her power, be it in the form of waves that topple seaside cottages from their pilings or the wind that rips trees up by their roots. Mountains tumble, the earth splits open, and the great polar ice sheets continue to do what they’ve done for millions of years, and all we can do is stand back and admit how powerless we really are against all of it.

Weather forecasters grow impassioned at the great weather events, and despite the danger, we insist on witnessing them. It is an ancient need, this desire to be reminded anew of our smallness in the face of 150-mile-per-hour winds. But it is also a taking of risk, as we venture out farther and farther to see first-hand the awesome and terrible force that puts everything into balance. For despite its ability to destroy, there is beauty in the wind, that on the one hand sets leaves to dancing and in an instance, can bring the tree down. There is beauty in the ice that can cut us off from all sustenance for a week or more, yet can also paint frosted ferns across window panes in the dead of winter. And there is majesty in the rain that, in one fell swoop, can refresh the parched earth, and wash entire villages away.

Here in this woodsy place, I have come to know the wind’s ways, as well as that of the rain, the cold, and the ice. I know its low rumble as it approaches from the west, hearing it long before I actually see the treetops bow before it. Each time I hear it howling or see the rain start to carve yet another rivulet on my hill, I pray that nature will be gentle.

I have come to intimately know the elements here, how they sound, how they behave, and what they have to tell me.  And I try never to forget what they’re capable of, if ever they’re of a mind to.

— Rachel Lovejoy is a freelance writer living in Lyman. She can be reached via e-mail at rlovejoy84253@roadrunner.com.