Meets The Big Wave on My Side of the Mountain
by Jenny
The rain sounded soft on my roof when I woke up this morning, and the salt-scented breeze through my window was only a whisper. I ambled to the coffeemaker and pushed the button, and while I waited for the brew I watched the tall eucalyptus trees swaying behind the oaks, a few yards from my mountainside cottage. They're stolid, gawky trees when they’re holding still, but when a wind comes through the grove they’re a troupe of ballet dancers in teal-feathered tutus, gracefully swirling and dipping in unison.
The wind picked up as I watched, and the dance became less graceful, more frenetic. The trees' limbs began to flail, and their whisper rose to a roar. I pulled back from the window. They’ve fallen before—last winter, a hundred-footer stumbled and crashed below my house, just missing my neighbor’s, bridging the gully and slamming its crown on the meadow. Remembering the sight of that slow-motion fall, and afraid that I might see another, I turned away from the window.
As I sipped my coffee and tried not to worry, words from Pearl S. Buck’s The Big Wave crossed my mind, about the Japanese homes on the seashore without any windows on the ocean side. The villagers had long refused to face the terror of the ocean, fearing the horrific rise of a tidal wave. Such avoidance of a frequent reality, of course, only disempowered them, and cost the protagonist’s friend his family and neighbors.
The clear message of this powerful, beautifully written little story is that we must face what scares us, not just to build courage but to gain knowledge that helps us prepare. In the end, when the boy became an adult, he built his own house with a window that faced the sea.
With that idea in mind, I turned back to the window facing my own stormy sea. The green waves of dangling, seaweed-like leaves were being violently tossed by the wind, which was screaming up the canyon from the ocean a mile away. A gust tore through the grove and gripped the treetops, as if in a great giant’s hand, and shook them so violently they cracked and groaned. Still watching, I stepped back from the glass.
There was a sharp snap like a gunshot somewhere down the narrow road, and right away the power went out. In the next moment, as I stepped out to the balcony, the grand old oak between the grove and me went down. Behind me, a branch crashed down from the large cedar looming above my home. Now I was thinking of Sam in My Side of the Mountain, hunkered down in his hollow tree in a storm, listening as tree branches shattered. In that story Sam stayed put, proving how well-prepared he was, how much he'd learned about taking care of himself.
But I felt more vulnerable than Sam, and wasn't about to sit tight. As was true in The Big Wave, there’s a time to look out and a time to head for high ground. I'd seen enough already. I quickly dressed, checked in with my neighbors, threw a few essentials into a bag, and left my little house in the big woods for the family farm on the other side of the mountain, just a mile away, where Becky now lives.
Sitting here now by the fire, with her cat at my side, and lots to read and to write, I’m counting my blessings. I know not everyone has a sibling whose doors are always open, or for that matter, even a family. I know not everyone has homeowners' insurance in case of the worst, or for that matter, even a home. I know not everyone sees sunnier days ahead. I hope you and yours are also safe and cozy on this blustery winter day, and that when you look out your window on the world, you too feel at peace.
The eucalypti and oaks by my house - photo by permission of my talented friend Anita Couchman