COWETA TO ME

Written by FAITH FARRELL

I should have known better. I should have known that what was about to happen was gonna be a doo-wop of a doozie. I’m apt to get migraines before a storm, and Thursday morning’s migraine was a whopper, an EF-4 of a headache. Mother Nature was about to pack a punch and my headache was just a hint. I should have known. Mother Nature doesn’t lie.

Recently, I wrote in this magazine about my pecan trees (“The Promise of Pecans,” March-April 2021). Now, I write their obituary.

How does one look back at a life whose history is hidden in its rings?

My partner Joe and I awoke to sirens and phone alerts that Friday morning. In a daze, we donned our shoes, grabbed flashlights and phones and ran outside into the shockingly still, shockingly electrified air. Running under the deck, we hunkered down in the four-foot, troll-hole crawlspace where spider web streamers decorated the red clay floor like a backwards birthday cake.

It is the noise that stays with me.

This noise has no name. It’s a roar that tries to steal your soul through your nostrils as you try to breathe it back in, an orchestra of the unknown hitting your house, slapping it silly. Twisty, poppy, turny sounds. Ears popping and brain turning off to mask you from your fermenting fear.

And then, sudden silence.

In a tar-black night, it was a game of midnight Marco Polo as we heard neighbors calling out to each other. “Are you alright?” “Do you need help?”

I crawled out into the unknown, trying to comprehend where I was in the dim glow of the flashlight. Whose backyard was this? Where were my beloved 100-plus-year-old pecan trees? Why was there a tree coming out of the shed? Shingles on a screen door, a screened door on a tree, a tree on a car? Nothing was making sense. I was Dorothy without her Oz.

Daylight would soon break and though it brought broken hearts and busted homes, it couldn’t burst the fierce fight this town is known for. Don’t mess with #NewnanStrong, for when you tango with Mother Nature, you might swirl off the dance floor and into the ring.

Our house had been spattered by a Big Ben-sized blender of grass and bark, bits and leaves. We lost a tree in the front yard and have a hole in the roof, which has recently led to half a kitchen. Our shed was crushed and our fence was a giant game of pick-up sticks. And of course, we lost the pecan trees.

Teetering on a seesaw of grief/gratitude, I realize their bark was better than their bite. Their falling was a final farewell of friendship. How do you thank trees for saving your life? For falling the way they did?

“Timber! You fall left, and I’ll fall right. That’s our gal who loves us so.”

In their Jenga tornado topple, they chose their final resting spot with precision and grace. I am grateful for their gravity.

I think of all the trees around this county that fell just so, spurring damage but sparing lives.

Blown down but not blown away, this community showed up. An outpouring of friends, neighbors and strangers passed out BBQ, bringing me to tears as a parade of four-wheelers stacked with supplies chugged to the beat of the chain-saw cha-cha.

No longer will I send out Christmas gifts of homegrown pecans. No longer will their tree canopies provide cool relief. I try to count their rings from their giant root balls but get lost in a dizzy spiral knowing I will no longer scavenge for nuts. I look up, scanning a sky polka-dotted with blue tarps and bent trees snapped like matchsticks. I shade my eyes from this unfamiliar sun – learning a landscape is not what you see but, like a magic trick, it’s also in what you don’t see.

I fill a mason jar with some of the leftover pecan wood chips. It’s a homespun urn of honor for my very old friends who tumbled just so, heaving their final hurrah in a perfectly placed, thunderous thud, sacrificing their story for mine.

Mother Nature may swirl and twirl and ravage her robes like a mysterious gypsy in the night. She may topple our trees, yank out our yards and hurl our houses. She may huff and puff, but she can not blow us down for we are #NewnanStrong.

I am not Dorothy. I do not need ruby slippers to remind me where home is. It is here where our strength is so strong it became a hashtag. It is the place where pecan trees selflessly sacrificed their strength and story – to show the world that thunder had finally met its match.

NCM