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As a writer and avid reader, I'm interested in references to the atmosphere and human interactions with that uncontrolled aspect of wilderness. Most narrative writers use the weather as setting or to establish a larger sense of place; Ernest Hemingway told someone, "Don't forget the weather in your damn book," but only a few describe the sort of connection that stormchasers and other weather enthusiasts hold in common. I plan this page as a clearinghouse for those kinds of passages, so send more if you find them! |
"The Storm Chasers" by William Olsen |
| This poem appeared in The Gettysburg Review in Spring of 1994 and was
later awarded a Pushcart Prize. Olsen included it in his book Trouble
Lights, available on Amazon. Gettysburg Review is one
of the small magazines to which literary fiction writers and poets are confined
until they get a Big Book Deal, which makes "lit mags"a great place to find
talented but as yet undiscovered writers. This is the first stanza; the poem is too long to reproduce entirely. If you like it, please buy the book. "The Storm Chasers" by William Olsen Just short of danger the camcorder stops one van keeps plodding forth past the rain-beaten YIELD sign in the headlights, past Andover, Kansas, farm kids stationary beside stationary pickups (the engines must still be clicking, hoods still warm), past even the squad car pulled to the side of the road and the sheriff holding up his end of astonishment, watching a string of streetlights pop like flashbulbs as someone's farmhouse is shriven into timber. Behind them the past goes abnormally clear for once, ahead of them the future is crossed by the sheering force we who have been twisted into apperception call form... I used to look for tornadoes over my parents' country-club golf course and car lights used to flow through stable trees like long grievous letters to those who are already dead, those who, on their separate voyages, hear nothing troublesome as they dispatch from our grief at practically the speed of changeling light, the awkward beings we knew as ancestors. What was there to do but watch the houses darken to wilderness while the streetlights shone prematurely, the green-flags snapping in the wind and yet there was nothing bereft about it, so much space all the grief in the world can't begin to fill that space." |
"Stickeen" by John Muir |
A friend showed me this essay by John Muir, a 19th century American naturalist, explorer, and gifted writer. The subject of the essay, called "Stickeen," is Muir's exploration of southeastern Alaskan glaciers, and the small black dog, named Stickeen, who accompanied the group--a dog Muir rejected at first as too small and weak for the rigorous travel. This excerpt doesn't give away the story, only sets it up, but includes the storm sentiment we all identify with. This is some great writing. The entire story, which is amazing, can be found here. "I awoke early, called not only by the glacier, which had been on my mind all night, but by a grand flood-storm. The wind was blowing a gale from the north and the rain was flying with the clouds in a wide passionate horizontal flood, as if it were all passing over the country instead of falling on it. The main perennial streams were booming high above their banks, and hundreds of new ones, roaring like the sea, almost covered the lofty gray walls of the inlet with white cascades and falls. I had intended making a cup of coffee and getting something like a breakfast before starting, but when I heard the storm and looked out I made haste to join it; for many of Nature's finest lessons are to be found in her storms , and if careful to keep in right relations with them, we may go safely abroad with them, rejoicing in the grandeur and beauty of their works and ways, and chanting with the old Norsemen, "The blast of the tempest aids our oars, the hurricane is our servant and drives us whither we wish to go." So, omitting breakfast, I put a piece of bread in my pocket and hurried away. Mr. Young and the Indian were asleep, and so, I hoped, was Stickeen; but I had not gone a dozen rods before he left his bed in the tent and came boring through the blast after me. That a man should welcome storms for their exhilarating music and motion, and go forth to see God making landscapes, is reasonable enough; but what fascination could there be in such tremendous weather for a dog? Surely nothing akin to human enthusiasm for scenery or geology. Anyhow, on he came, breakfastless, through the choking blast. I stopped and did my best to turn him back. "Now don't," I said, shouting to make myself heard in the storm. "now don't, Stickeen. What has got into your queer noddle now? You must be daft. This wild day has nothing for you. There is no game abroad, nothing but weather. Go back to camp and keep warm, get a good breakfast with your master, and be sensible for once. I can't carry you all day or feed you, and this storm will kill you." But Nature, it seems, was at the bottom of the affair, and she gains her ends with dogs as well as with men, making us do as she likes, shoving and pulling us along her ways, however rough, all but killing us at times in getting her lessons driven hard home. After I had stopped again and again, shouting good warning advice, I saw that he was not to be shaken off; as well might the earth try to shake off the moon. I had once led his master into trouble, when he fell on one of the topmost jags of a mountain and dislocated his arm ; now the turn of his humble companion was coming. The pitiful wanderer just stood there in the wind, drenched and blinking, saying doggedly , "Where thou goest I will go." So at last I told him to come on if he must, and gave him a piece of the bread I had in my pocket; then we struggled on together, and thus began the most memorable of all my wild days." |