The heat breaks—not with a whimper, but a roar.
The final days of summer pinned the valley beneath a clenched fist of heat. The green of spring fled after the long season, leaving behind a palette of exhaustion: dusty browns, jaundiced yellows. The lawn, once a living carpet, hardened into a crust of trimmed straw and dust.
The woods drew inward. Undergrowth withered beneath the midday sun. Leaves hung limp or tilted skyward, their pale undersides catching light in silent signals of thirst. The stream, once again, retreated to a thread, exposing smooth stones to the naked air. In the shallow pools that remained, moonlight revealed crayfish drifting near the surface—a delicacy for screech owls, whose soft, wavering calls pierced the warm darkness.
Then, the storm.
Wind transformed treetops into wild dancers, their limbs thrashing beneath a purple-black sky. Rain fell in sheets—translucent curtains drawn across the stage of summer. The baked earth couldn’t drink fast enough. Every dip and hollow became a pool, every slope a stream. Wind-torn leaves sailed down these momentary rivers. Water spiraled in silver ribbons down tree trunks.
The stream roared with new voice, thick with soil and twigs and leaves. Lightning split the darkness, briefly painting the world in stark relief. Thunder, as if rebuking the trespass, crashed—shaking windows and sending the cats scurrying from its rage. Wind howled through the hollow of the valley, blowing open an automatic door and flooding the living room with a sudden gust of wild air in the night.
Morning arrived tentatively, to a world remade.
The lawn is chaos—scattered branches and a premature autumn of wind-torn leaves. The stream, no longer a whisper but a hoarse shout, surges toward reunion with river, bay, and Atlantic. The patio holds the memory of the wind’s ecstatic dance: chairs huddled and tossed, potted strawberry plants sprawled against the railing, arrested mid-escape.
And there—most unexpected of all—a great blue heron stands atop my daughter’s SUV. Four feet of prehistoric grace balanced on modern steel and rubber. Driven from flooded hunting grounds, it may have mistaken our rain-slicked driveway for stiller waters.
We watch each other, the heron and I. Its yellow eye meets mine, unblinking. In this moment between storm and whatever comes next, we share the strange intimacy of survivors. The heron, tall and still as weathered driftwood. Me, sitting motionless in my wheelchair, breathing clean-washed air, feeling the cool against my skin.
I marvel at this collision of ancient and modern, wild and machine. It studies the curious absence of fish in the promising asphalt-dark pool before the garage.
Renewal comes, but not always gently.
Sometimes it arrives in the night, with wind and thunder, washing away certainties and leaving us blinking in new light. We find ourselves as astonished as a heron on a car roof, wondering at the strange new world in which we wake.