All of a sudden, here it is, October 1. We’ve already made it three-quarters of the way through 2022. September was interesting and – if you’re new to this blog or just missed yesterday’s post – you can see the month reviewed in 30 pictures by clicking here.

So I opened the front door this morning to take Max for his walk and had to move branches off the steps. Hurricane Ian has left a real mess all the way from South Florida through North Carolina, and there’s debris absolutely everywhere.

I’m not that surprised. We have so many trees on our property we could classify tropical weather systems by what comes down, making inferences from the debris pattern like a detective with a microscope looking at blood spatter at a crime scene.

Instead of, “Hurricane Ian was a weak tropical storm when it came through Wake Forest,” we could say, “Millions of leaves, thousands of pine-cones, tons of pine-straw, multiple twigs, small branches up to two-inches in diameter, and then medium-sized limbs already dead and ready to fall.”

The constant sound of small branches bouncing off the roof and the occasional impressively loud crash told the story. No damage so far as I can tell, only many days of cleanup, especially as everything is so soaking sopping wet. There’s nothing a photograph can really capture, at least until we pile several mountains of loose organic material by the side of the road.

Yesterday, watching the projected path move gradually in our direction, I took a short video to send to the grandchildren in Orlando, just so they could see that Ian had visited us, too.

There is a huge difference between the last gasps of a blown-out storm (inconvenience, mess, and lots of work) and the life-shattering impact of a Category 4/5 behemoth killer super-hurricane.

Regardless, either way the sheer unmanageability of “Mother Nature” is humbling. It bears remembering that we live on a wild, untamed, unpredictable planet. Creation is not something to be feared, however, but respected.

We have a long way to go on the “respect” part of this equation, and I for one pray that we move forward from this day with less hubris and more thoughtfulness. We have to share this planet, and it seems the more we forget that the harder it fights back.

Peace – and I mean that in every way – DEREK