Monica posted on April 12, 2008 10:56 :: 4353 Views
Mother Nature came calling today, but judging from her behavior, she wasn’t in a very feminine mood.
She howled into town and made a beeline for my house, wrapping her cold arms tightly around it and then shaking it until the windows rattled. I backed away, backed into my warm and cozy space, and turned my eyes firmly from the windows that were opaque with snow. I was pouting. This was April 11, and it’s supposed to be spring.
“Come out, come out,” she howled. “Bring your camera. There are pictures out here.”
I didn’t want to play with her today. The weathermen were calling this a blizzard. It was a day for baking and for books, for long fleece dresses and thick socks. She deserved to be ignored for treating one of her most ardent devotees this way.
Her voice deepened. She moaned through the pine trees outside the kitchen window, snapping off a branch in a fit of pique. She hummed through the overhead wires, threatening to yank them from their tethers. She whistled through the uninsulated cracks around my windows.
I withstood her tantrums for a while--30 minutes or so. Then I roamed through the house, looking for a window with a clear space so I could see outside. I dug my camera out and fiddled with the settings. Two layers of glass? What the heck. I could shoot through that.
It was a snicker I heard when I opened the front door and zoomed in on the pine tree across the street, drooping under its winter/spring coat. The wind tossed its long branches one way, while pushing the neighboring tree in another. I think someone had brought in reinforcements.
I snapped snow slithering down panes of glass, and clumps of thickened snow flocking naked pear trees. I focused on the back door screen, swirled with blizzard largesse like frosting on a cake. But I didn’t go outside for a closer look. I resisted.
Until mid-afternoon. I couldn’t stand it any longer than that. The snicker turned into a full-blown laugh when I dug out my boots, yanked up my hood, grabbed the van keys, and stomped my way outside.
“Play with me, play with me,” she sang, as she dipped and swirled around me like a dancing partner gone mad. “I made pretty pictures for you. Come see…come see…”
So I went to see, down to the breakwater, like an addict unable to resist the source of her fix. I apologized silently to the Nikon, sitting unknowingly in its padded case on the seat next to me, unaware of the assault it would soon be exposed to.
Three cars were already there, the occupants staring through the windshields, motors running, heaters blowing. But around my van, Mother Nature crooked her icy fingers, beckoning me out into the maelstrom that nearly ripped the door from its hinges when I opened it.
“Follow me,” she wailed, pulling and pushing at me like an overgrown child tumbling toward a party with presents. I pulled my camera out, set the ISO at 200 and the aperture at 14, then stumbled up the path, up the hill, reached the crest--and halted, dumbfounded.
Waves launched themselves 30 feet into the air and then came together in a crash of froth and foam, shooting forward in a momentum that took them to the vegetation line. Nothing stood still, no small part of the lake was at rest. Breakers hurled themselves at the breakwater as if to tear it from its foundations, then spiraled down its length with a sound like hollow fear.
Once again, I snapped frantically at the lake, while in my ear Nature taunted me with I-told-you-so. Other words surged through my mind even louder: “For the kingdom and the power and the glory are yours…”
Power and glory for sure, and Nature only a messenger. It just took me a while to listen, and to give in. When I did, I wanted to stand, spread-eagled, arms flung wide, abandoned to the life force surging with joy disguised as fury. I drove home 140 shots later, feeling invigorated, renewed, ALIVE.
Next time Mother Nature comes calling, maybe I won’t be such a hard sell.
Live Life Joyfully,
Monica Isley
View more of this author's photography.
Monica Isley is a former newspaper reporter/columnist/photographer who once stalked the Lake Superior shoreline in northeastern Minnesota, camera in hand. She now lives in Sturgeon Bay, Wis., where the summers are warmer and the winters are milder than she's used to, but where photographic prey is just as available. Besides this column for JustNorth, she writes a blog called Monica's Pen at http://monicaspen.wordpress.com/
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