When I’m not eating like a hog, moving like a sloth, sweating like a horse, and smelling like a goat, I’m swimming like an otter, laughing like a hyena, sleeping like a log, and smelling like a rose. Or some mixed-up combination thereof. It’s all extremes lately.

In a week’s time we have such highs and lows, no? One day it’s a crazy-good 4^th of July; days later, disaster strikes. If, in Vermont, you haven’t suffered serious flood damage, you know people who have. Flooding and dam issues continue. It has us on pins and needles, drinking like fish. Our daily lives seem full of extremes.

Maybe this is partly due to COVID. We’re now positively overjoyed, in a way we weren’t prior, at simply sharing a sunset or religious service or dancing together. A party is a big deal. Dining out? Thrilling! Contrarily, with people being more forthcoming these days, we hear sad personal news like never before (diseases, suicides, overdoses). Throw in endless televised news with upsetting global stories and there is much to fret about. The highs are higher and lows more frequent, like a screwy rollercoaster.

The weather is reflecting the extremes inside us, or causing them. Both?  Initially, I dug the mad dash to close car windows for daily cloudbursts. Now it seems silly that I’d planned to stand out in the biblical downpours and get soaked.  Fun as a kid. Now: rain is scary.

Before the flood, I wrote: “How do wild animals feel about such rain? Do they just run with it? Or are the birds like, come on already, quit raining, we gotta  f l y. The fish hate droughts, but do they enjoy chronic turbulence? I envision little fish banging into rocks, mystified. Is that what divorce is like? Nothing makes any sense any more, and you’re just tossed around, blind, lost?”

Now it seems unlikely any fish survived Vermont’s waste-filled rivers. Riverside songbirds have taken off, their cover washed away.

There’s not a hell of a lot we can do for these floods except build wiser, use less fossil energy, monitor rainfall better, and help each other dig out. With terrible timing I had a bike crash right before the flood, so I can’t get that hopeful feeling you get from helping others; I can’t lift my own head. Fit as a fiddle after the Irene Flood, it was easy to roll up sleeves and dig in. The Bucket Brigade marched by in their Wellies, waders, and shorts, bailing out basements gratis. We cheered! Our young, Superhuman Heroes! Nothing beats in-person neighbors helping neighbors. Sign up at vermont.gov/volunteer.

Friend Sassy and I were discussing how, decades ago, we just felt more safe. Then I see a sign, “WARNING: Windows can be hazardous.” For God’s sake, what isn’t? We constantly learn of new hazards, with dread. Like: Do not go in brown, churning water. There is no oxygen in such water, and humans have no buoyancy as a result. A life preserver does no good; you will sink like granite. As I’m afraid did the fish.

Weather disasters, ticks, shootings, marauding bots … who feels safe? The good news is that humans default, mostly, to trust. (See Malcolm Gladwell’s dark book Talking to Strangers.) Turns out we mostly try to envision a safe world. We trust.

Electrical storms, now there we can take action. Lightning can mess you UP. Fuse your vertebrae, destroy your bone health or hearing … avoid! If you can hear thunder, you can be struck by lightning. Lightning can strike from 10 miles away. Do not go in a shower or tub during a storm. Or on a landline. Or by a window (hazardous!). Hide in bed. I do.

A friend said about The Flood, “Not sure what the damn message is.”  I have no answer. Some questions remain ever unanswered (“What’s that smell?”), others answered eventually (“It was the O-rings”). Undeserved misfortune is simply part of life, no? In Vermont we try for tiny carbon footprints. California blows us away in electric vehicles, but Vermont buys local, promotes rideshares, and wastes little. And gets punished anyway.

For now, we’re like blindfolded rats in a maze, operating on some combo of memory, ESP, and science – to repair and rebuild. Then, as humans do, buoyed by the LIFT of helping each other and an inclination towards trust, we will bounce back. Soon we’ll run like the wind, baying like hounds, having the time of our lives. Strong as an ox, maybe a blue ox. Maybe sooner than we think. 

May you rise like a Phoenix, with strength like Hercules’, helpers lifting you like angels, and your worries vanishing like a mist. Please enjoy, as able, a Good Day.