The Forest For the Trees
The week before derecho I walked to Bever Park in Cedar Rapids looking for wildlife. I had been photographing deer, including bucks with full, fuzzy racks munching on rich green foliage.
A bunny eats grass on a lush, green lawn in July 2020.
They were often out as I walked the trails looking into a gully where streams converge into a lush glen.
A deer eats foliage and swats flies away with its tail. July 2020.
I had seen a mother and two fawns the day before, and I thought the buck, not seen in a week, might be bedding down somewhere in there. I was not disappointed.
The buck was standing behind two trees. His rump protruded from behind the trunk of the furthest tree, but I couldn’t see his head and couldn’t get a clear shot. I had a zoom lens at 400mm, and with the late afternoon light, I couldn’t get a fast enough speed for a sharp photo without bracing against something. Turkeys gobbled on the far hill, an idyllic moment in a midwestern city greenway.
I moved left to see the deer, and snapped a blurry shot. The deer heard my shutter click, looked at me, then kept eating. I took another photo. Blurry. I was off the trail and descending toward the valley floor where there was a sapling large enough for me to brace my elbow against to steady my shot. The deer sat down in the glen and watched me.
A week later, on August 10, I was working in the living room. COVID, of course, had me working from home rather than at the library, where I often found a place to get things done out in the world.
I’m a creative director for a Denver based design firm. I work on websites, review copy, write advertising and blogs, analyze target demographics and position products and services. I was stressed. Our volume was way up due to the pandemic. Everyone with anything to sell was moving their operations and marketing online – streamlining their offer – finding side products that were suddenly center stage like hand sanitizer, disinfecting powder and wet towelettes. I had a lot to do.
My wife, Karrie, came out and told me the news, “Today it is supposed to be windy and stormy. It could get up to 60 miles per hour. Maybe we should bring some plants inside.”
I checked our porch and moved three potted trees off the ledge to the porch floor, “Maybe I should bring these in,” I said. I didn’t want to. My Bonzai trees were getting good light and had handled recent rain and winds well.
“I think I’ll just keep an eye on it. Up against the house they shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll bring them in if it gets bad.”
I got back to work and Karrie took a shower.
The loan broker website I was directing was taking a lot longer than we wanted it to. The client wanted a unique navigation: an acronym with a complex set of dropdown menus and a broad array of offers from credit repair and debt consolidation to SBA loans and business consulting. Each part of the site required unique but related positioning. In addition, I was assessing the marketing for a group of lawyers using alternative dispute resolution to help clients stay out of court and mitigate procedural legal fees, and — hopefully — collaborate constructively on outcomes. Everything had to keep moving at the same time. Everything had to be right.
I saw the clouds coming in. I looked out the window. Nothing was blowing too bad. I moved back to the couch. The sky went dark and rain started pelting the house. I turned on a lamp. The wind was picking up and I heard the tornado siren go off.
“Karrie,” I knocked on the bathroom door, “the sirens are going off. Maybe we should go to the basement.”
We are in Iowa. Nobody goes to the basement.
The little trees were rolling around on the front porch. I went to the front door, opened it. One of the pots blew off the tree and down the stairs. I closed the door.
Karrie was out of the shower and dressing in the bedroom.
“This is bad. I’m going to film some of it from the window. Be quiet.”
I’m always interrupting shots, not knowing when she’s started a take with some delicate sound in the background.
We went back and forth, filming at the front, then at the back, watching squalls of rain batter the roofs, then shingles flying off, then branches dropping.
The light in the living room flickered.
We went from room to room unplugging stuff. I turned off the air conditioner. The lights went out.
The back doors on the house were starting to rattle and strain against their bolts and hinges. I sat down and leaned my back up against the door.
“I don’t want the doors to bust open,” I said. I should have been in the basement. We should have been in the basement.
After the storm passed, we went outside. The recycling bin smashed our roses. The neighbor’s tree branch was on the fence. Our corn was mowed down.
I walked down the driveway. Karrie was photographing the street, covered in branches.
“Mom’s car is dented up and her window shattered,” she said.
“I’ll get some plastic for the window.”
I went up the front steps, in and down to the basement. I grabbed some plastic sheeting for painting and on the way back up the stairs, grabbed the packing tape. I didn’t yet know the car was totaled.
Things were quiet and muggy, and we were back in the house.
Outside a chainsaw started up. I peered through the window. A neighbor across the street was cutting trees. I walked back down the drive toward where he was cutting.
“You want to start pulling branches?” he asked.
I nodded and started pulling branches. His kids, and a couple of other kids from down the block, were already pulling. Up the street I could see a neighbor wrestling with a large, twisted branch as he worked to drag it from the road onto his lawn.
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Yesterday the neighbors came out to help clear the street. There was no passage through our street.
The street was impassible. An Amazon delivery driver was stranded at the dead end side of our street. More neighbors came out. Cutting and pulling.
Our neighbor runs a landscaping business and knows what he is doing with a chainsaw. Someone else with too much confidence started chainsawing, too.
“Stand back. Stand back. If you cut the tree there it’s gonna roll.”
Image: A gray car is spattered with leaf debris from high winds. On top of the car, an evergreen tree has collapsed, shattering the window.
Instead of cutting it, we tried pushing it. The car window under the downed tree burst like a balloon. We kept pushing.
“Wait, the branch is going to snap too.”
“Guess we are going to have to strip it of branches before we cut the tree,” Mike said. He already knew that was the best approach, but the other guy would have ended up pinned under a tree if he’d kept going. At least stopping the cut to try to get the tree on the ground changed up that dynamic.
A neighbor pulled in, “Oh my gosh, it took me an hour to get here from downtown. It’s terrible. The US Bank building had sections blown right off of it.” It’s maybe a mile to downtown.
Another neighbor pulled in.
“I’m going to get cleaned up and come help.” He just got back from shooting at the range.
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Four hours? Five hours? The last tree was cut. The Amazon driver could get from the dead end to the main road, which was backed up, bumper to bumper.
I walked back to the house.
“The garden is destroyed,” Karrie said.
“I wonder what it’s like down at the park.”
Image: Trees in a forest park are broken and in disarray. Some trees are standing while others have broken limbs, and still others are broken in half.
A squirrel climbs through downed limbs at the edge of Bever Park. Houses can be seen in the background beyond the debris.