Live Oak Blues What happens.

Yes, I lived through this tornado

I love me some wind. The more, the better. During the ’04 hurricanes, I actually went for a run around Gainesville. Every time I took a step the wind carried me a few yards. I felt like a Kenyan. You could say that I have a fetish for severe weather in general. One of the many reasons I love John Muir is that he once climbed to the top of a tall pine in a thunderstorm to feel the full force of the wind. Ditto, Carl Hiaasen’s character Skink, who lashes himself to an overpass in Miami during a hurricane.

All this is perhaps my adult reaction to a childhood lived as a bad weather chickenshit. In Louisville, KY, whenever a tornado watch would come across the airwaves, I’d be down in the basement in the fetal position. So when I found myself at 11 years old, living through a legitimately deadly tornado on April 3, 1974–a tornado system so destructive it is known in weather circles simply as the Super Outbreak–all my worst fears came to pass. My father was up in a tree photographing it as it came through, my youngest brother was at day care directly in the path of it, and I was in the basement crying and doing a picture-perfect “duck and cover.”

The only dry space where I could take a picture yesterday

Today, I get disappointed when a tornado or hurricane misses us, so I guess you could say I sacked up at some point. It is no coincidence, I suppose, that my line of work now involves Disaster Management. When I heard it was going to be more than a little windy yesterday, I headed out to the Gulf to kayak in it–a lovely day full of gusts and salt spray and waves that soaked me from head to toe. I wanted more, of course, and although my loved ones will probably prevent me from lashing myself to a pine tree, that does not prevent me from fantasizing about it.