Bismarck, N.D. — Recently while I was reading, I heard a low rumble outside. At first, I could not make sense of it, but then I realized it was the first thunder of the year. I dropped what I was doing and exited my porch, which points south and west. West is where the thunderstorms come from on the Great Plains.
It was a lazy “starter” thunderstorm, almost half-hearted. Typically we don’t get genuine punishing thunderstorms until after Memorial Day. I sat in a camp chair on the porch and studied the sky. It was dead calm. The storm was mostly south of the part of North Dakota where I live, and I was getting just the edge of it. Every five or six minutes, I’d hear the rumble approach, and the clouds would brighten. But it was not even heat lightning. I read for some more, hoping the storm would improve.
It got too dark to read — still dead calm. I went inside to do some work.
About 40 minutes later, the wind picked up. I returned to the porch. There is a cottonwood, not 15 feet from where I was sitting. I planted that cottonwood about 10 years ago. They are hard to grow, and they take root where they want to take root, by Nature’s dynamics, and they resist humans trying to play tree god. But this one took root and — what is even more important — found water a few feet below the surface. It grew like a weed. It’s 40 feet tall now, more vertical than most cottonwoods.
Now the leaves were dancing, and the great branches of the tree were swaying away from the wind. Ten days ago, when the leaves first expressed themselves out from the buds, they were small, the size of postage stamps, and so new to the world that they were almost translucent. I love cottonwoods in all of their moods, but I love them most twice a year — when they first appear in late April or early May and when they turn in late September — translucent in May, fiery yellow and gold and saffron in the autumn. In the autumn, I find my way to giant cottonwoods — there are three special stands within two hours of my home — and lie under them for hours at a time, my hands cradled behind my head, Huck Finn-like, just experiencing the symphony of a cottonwood so large that different parts of it dance in the breeze at different times.
As I sat watching the orgiastic movement of these young cottonwood leaves, I had the urge to talk with them, so I did, out loud. I said, “Well, welcome to the Great Plains. You’ve had a peaceful beginning this year. Now you are experiencing your first storm, and though you are designed for these moments for tens of millions of years, this must come as a kind of shock, even a body blow, to you. But I can assure you that you will get through this and experience much more thunderstorm drama before the fall.”
They did not reply. Last week, I asked a trusted scientist if she thought trees have consciousness. “Duh,” she replied. That’s a technical term, but I’m not sure. They may have consciousness and communicate, but not to me, not in a language I have yet learned to speak.
One of my favorite moments of the year is camping when a giant thunderstorm comes through. You can see them building for tens of miles on the western horizon. As they slowly move towards you, you try to reckon if they will veer off south, north, or peter out before they get to you. But they finally come, and the storm’s power is magnificent. It’s a good storm if you get a little scared. Twice in my life, I have been out camping on the undulations of the Great Plains and I have known without a doubt that I was as likely to die right there that night, struck by lightning. That is a thrilling moment. You flatten out in a hollow of the grass and count the seconds between the flash and the thunder.
This is one of the most extraordinary experiences, and you cannot have it at home because when the storm reaches its most potent, you go inside. But you have to take what it gives out on the prairie in a flimsy poly tent. There is no escape, and too far to the car. No shelter in any direction. “Thy will be done.”
And then the intensity begins to lessen and you know you have survived the storm. But you are as awake as you ever get to be. I thank God I live in such a biosphere. I would feel cheated if we lived on a planet without thunderstorms and blizzards. We had one or two annual thunderstorms when I lived in Reno for seventeen years. I moved back to Dakota in 2005 for all the right (or is it wrong?) reasons:
– Thunderstorms
– Ground blizzards
– Sockdolager blizzards
– The smell of agriculture, particularly silage
– The endless mid-June evenings when the light doesn’t want to go away
– Cottonwoods in the fall after the first freeze but before the advancing winter sweeps them away
– The sound of the meadowlark
– The crooning of the coyotes
– And the sacred Little Missouri River out in the badlands
Last night’s storm was the warmup band for what is to come. I sat out again this morning reading the news, and the cottonwood tree close to my porch looked different. The leaves were no longer translucent and had been shaken into maturity. The growing season in Dakota is short, and you must grow up fast.
I have a big yard. When I bought the house, one cottonwood was in place on the north side, and I have planted all the rest. Now the house is flanked by two giants, like sentinels. I hope they don’t blow down on my roof during my watch. And there is one way out back that is equally tall. Sometimes I go out into the open yard with a camp chair and just feel gratitude to Nature.