The Lessons Of A Hurricane

Things are settling down in my town after Hurricane Irma, with piles of brush lining the streets of Sarasota.

- Mary Boutieller

People in Southwest Florida are starting to get back to “normal,” catching up on rest, returning to routines, and feeling the soothing of frazzled nerves. Elsewhere, there are still many people struggling to return to normalcy, those whose losses I can only imagine. In the Keys, Puerto Rico and elsewhere, we keep all of those people in our hearts as they recover from the storms. 

We had planned a beautiful hike across the balds, getting up over 6,000 feet elevation, a hike we’ve done twice before. It was supposed to be a blissful, nature-saturated, “get away from it all” kind of hike. That was before I knew about Irma John and I had just finished a four-day hike with friends and, after exiting the woods, learned about the approaching storm. We arrived at the inn we were planning to stay at for a couple of days and turned on the news. Frantic phone calls to loved ones confirmed that the news we were seeing was correct. The hurricane was heading toward Sarasota; heading toward family and friends and all that we cared about in our daily lives.