Another Story

So here is one more from Kim Stafford’s poetry book, Wild Honey, Tough Salt, my book purchase of a couple days ago. I don’t know if he wrote this poem, “Notes From the Storm At Billy Meadow,” up in the mountains when we were there, or later, but I was there for the storm. Same setting as yesterday’s blip: wilderness of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest. Our writing group was camped at an old Forest Service ranger station, Billy Meadows. On our first night, a massive thunderstorm rolled over our company scattered in tents throughout the forest. It was the most intense thunderstorm I have ever experienced. Lightning bolts hit a couple of hundred feet or less across the meadow from me in my tent. Rain and hail slashed at my tent, and while I should have been deathly afraid, I had a deep calm just watching this intensity. It finally passed over us, and I slept peacefully in a quiet, and wet tent.

The next morning when we met for breakfast, we all shared stories from the storm. Several folks said they cowered in fetal positions in their sleeping bags. Kim waited last to tell. He said, “I had to get out and walk in it.”

His poem tells the rest.