Experiencing Nature in Warren County, Indiana 3

On a sunny April Saturday when I was in high school, I had been disking for my father. My International 560 tractor needed gasoline, so I drove from the fields back to the house. I pulled alongside the elevated gas barrel, switched off the engine, spun off the gas cap, and began filling. The day was hot and still. Even the birds were taking a break from their hectic springtime schedule. With the tank full, I hung the hose on its iron saddle and thought about returning to my disking.

Rough Weather Ahead

Drawing by W. Hamilton Gibson (1850–1896)

Engraved by F. S. King (1848–1936)

In The Closing Scene

Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1887

My father and my brother were working with tractors in adjacent fields about as far from the house as they could be. Would they miss me for fifteen additional minutes? I decided they would not, so I strode to the house and stretched out on the sofa for a quick nap.

Naturally, I lost track of the time. Imagine my surprise when my brother and my father noisily entered the living room! They were talking loudly with considerable animation. In my half-asleep state, I felt they were angry with me for shirking my responsibility. My sense of guilt helped me awaken fully. Then I realized they were not speaking about my indolence; rather, they were discussing the funnel cloud that had just crossed near the north end of our farm.

I sat up and listened to their description of the funnel, which began to touch down but lifted immediately. I glanced at the clock. I had slept for less than an hour. In just that length of time, the skies to the west had darkened, and a storm had approached. On its path from southwest to northeast, the blue-black cloud mass had passed on an angle a little over a mile north of our house. Acknowledging the dangers of lightning, my father had signaled my brother to bring his tractor and plow up to the house while my father drove his tractor and corn planter up to the barn. When they entered the barnyard, they witnessed the funnel’s descent.

I had slept through the excitement. And I was disappointed! In my late teens, I had wanted to spot a tornado. (I do not want to see one now.) Had I not tried to sneak in a nap, I could have watched the formation of a funnel, however briefly. A few years later, deadly tornadoes struck. I was in college. I drove home on the weekend after the massive tornadoes, and my father and I toured the damage. I remember two-story farmhouses missing walls so that they looked like oversize dollhouses. Most impressive was a mile-wide swath cut through a woods. Stripped of their bark, trunks of large trees lay where they were mowed down. My cousin’s house was destroyed. My father and I collected large balls of metal from the north end of our farm. Metal roofing and siding had been loosely rolled and tossed aside. Our buildings sustained no damage, but I had to walk down the country road to our neighbor’s house to collect the chairs that had been sitting on our front porch.

In my experience, the most severe storms always traveled on a diagonal line to the north of our farm. I wondered what factors determined their course. To me, the annual threat of tornadoes made life on the prairie seem exciting but precarious. I have not felt quite so vulnerable when living in other places. Oddly, that vulnerability was also part of feeling closely connected to nature: a connection I have not felt as powerfully since.