There is a distinct, panicked silence that accompanies the wait for a hurricane to strike.
I mean, once the panic is over, once the supplies are put safely away on high shelves or in air-tight coolers, once you have bloodied your fists for the last jar of peanut butter on the shelves at Publix…you’re just waiting in silence. The silence comes from the stillness of the hive; humans are 24 creatures now, and business might close for the night but families don’t.
But it’s the 11th hour and there are no cars on the road. No planes overhead. No phones chirping music, nobody walking their dog down the street.
They say it’s the “calm” before the storm, but it’s not calming. It’s tense and sweaty and scary — well, it’s scary for those who understand the danger — and so very, very silent. Even when the winds come and whip like angry water demons against every surface and trees snap and fall and roof shingles flutter around with fatal abandon, it’s silent.
Because for once, nature has taken over. The perpetual noise machine of humanity has ground to a slow, disgruntled stop, and we are left living in the void of our own absence. The buzz of electricity is gone, the hum of us all going about our day has been quieted. Nature fills that void with violence and panic, but in so many ways, in artificial, human, comforting ways, our world becomes silent.
My thoughts are with family and friends in the path of Hurricane Matthew tonight and tomorrow as they wait, bowing but not breaking for silence, wind, or water. <3
