Amid tragedy, one finds the truth in clichés

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We’ve all seen videos of natural disasters in progress in which voices in the background desperately call to the almighty — regardless, perhaps, of their usual relationship with the almighty.

As a stoic person, I like to think of myself as immune to that sort of indignity, yet 27 years ago I learned this is not so, while trying to get home to safety during a springtime severe storm.

It came on abruptly. I was idling at a stoplight in the middle of the day on the east side of Interstate Hwy. 35W at Burnsville Parkway and noticed the sky turning a sickly green. After the traffic light had turned a more pleasing green and I’d reached the west side of the bridge, the day was night and the night was swirling.

I made it another mile to my street before the wind came and all visibility was lost. The car was beginning to levitate. I drove past my driveway before I recognized where I was. I backed up, pulled in and pushed the button on the garage door opener — nothing. The electricity was already out.

Then the Very Large Hail began.

I had two dogs in the car with me, and as the roof clattered and the windshield threatened to shatter, one of them — a bichon and terrier mix — stood defiantly on my lap, chest puffed out. The little dog knew what I hadn’t fully absorbed — that nothing is permanent except your pride. And that only if you choose.

When the storm subsided, no doubt in much less time than it seemed, I went into the house and discovered rooms full of broken glass. Two large windows had been blown out. My car, meanwhile, was declared totaled.

All this happened in 1998, just two months after a tornado had ripped through a swath of St. Peter, a city I’d frequented while in college. There was a tornado in the Twin Cities area that day I was stuck out in the elements, although it was identified as such only as the system moved through the opposite side of the metro, in Fridley.

The occasion for my telling this story is the ongoing tragedy of the Los Angeles wildfires.

One of my mind-relaxing downtime hobbies is to look at real estate online. I identify intriguing houses in geographically interesting areas and imagine what it would be like to live in those houses and those places, even though I never will.

I do this because I’ve spent my entire life in Minnesota, a lovely if flat land, and there’s something that appeals to me about hills.

California, including L.A., is one place I look. Los Angeles also holds fascination for all of us, I imagine, because of its cultural influence — an influence that seems like it always was and always will be but is actually only about a hundred years old and has, for many people, been wearing thin. (We can only hope that any such disregard turns to goodwill during this terrible time.)

News coverage of wildfires is interesting in that it makes it seem like flames have engulfed an entire region at once. That isn’t the case — there are front lines and flare-ups, hot pockets and flying embers — but that’s a distinction that doesn’t matter. Within a threatened area during a wildfire, no life nor property is guaranteed. Nor is any escape route.

Hills are prime areas of risk.

Some years ago I spotted a house for sale above Sonoma in northern California that had not just awesome views but also a unique layout (in a functional way) and an actually reasonable amount of square footage. If I could’ve afforded it, I would’ve bought it. Those hills around Sonoma burned in 2017. Twenty-two people died in that particular blaze. I don’t know the fate of the house.

More recently I’ve been fascinated by Asheville, N.C., as a place to retire to or at least visit. Asheville, well inland, was washed out horribly by the incursion of Hurricane Helene in October. At least 40 people died there.

I actually did vacation once in Phuket, Thailand, staying at a hotel along the beach. We walked out quite far from shore during low tide. After the tsunami hit in 2004 — nine years after I was there — I saw a news photo of that very hotel with a car floating in its lobby. About 150 died in Phuket during that event.

I feel lucky. I am.

Last summer, the Twin Cities experienced two windstorms a few weeks apart. A thick branch from a tree fell on the house where I now live in Minneapolis during one of those storms, and the entire top of the same tree did the same during the other. Damage was remarkably light — one small hole punched through one corner of the roof.

I thought it had been patched while the roofing company tried to work out a full repair estimate with the now-recalcitrant insurance company, but noises from the attic the last few nights suggest otherwise. Wildlife has moved in.