Under the Eye of Katrina \r\nAugust 28, 2005 in Slidell, Louisiana\r\nby Lucy Wells Tierney\r\n\r\nI feel as if I have been initiated into the State of Louisiana, an awful ritual.\r\nYesterday a father cardinal fed his shivering daughter and two mother squirrels nursed six baby squirrels with unopened eyes.\r\nToday the earth vibrates from falling limbs and primeval powers. The wind starts rushing in long blows, whistling around the corner of my house. There is the sound of a great waterfall but little rain, the fragrance of a giant pine forest, clean-scoured. A bird calls alarm. The arm of the pecan tree moves back and forth like the beam of a sailing ship in a frenzied squall. Trees fall. Hope for a good acorn crop is dashed to the ground simultaneously with the baby squirrels.\r\nIn a beautiful dance the pecan tree bows to the sasanqua camellia, tossing his mane of ivy. A great limb fall moves me toward a closet.\r\nAt 7:10 a.m. the great old corner water oak falls to its death - a shocking sight. There is skylight where the tree bough used to shade. Who was living in that old oak tree? I recall a surreal painting of a tree attacking people. Crash of another tree further away. The sky is dark, but not yet from rain. And the wind blows relentlessly.\r\nThe pecan bows so abjectly to the sasanqua that he scrapes her head. Then he slashes at her. There\'s an airplane noise though none should fly. I put in earplugs and nap to adjust to the situation. \r\n At 8:10 there is a giant roar. The house is under siege by a northeast wind. Poor azaleas, which are so sensitive. The neighbor\'s pine tree falls. There is a high overhead rushing and a tree a block away falls, though the overhead wind was blowing nothing but wind. The wind seethes at the window. The siege intensifies. A neighbor\'s tree falls. There is another bird call. \r\nAt 9:10 rain is driven at a 45-degree angle. The mulberry looks hurt but the ginger herbs are O.K. At 9:20 there is a louder roaring. The pecan tree bends to a 50-degree angle. Then it falls to its death at 9:25.\r\nAt 9:29 the hovercraft tree died. I never thought the siamese twins that supported my children\'s swings twenty years ago would die. Death. Death. Death. Friends have died. And yet the wind continues harder. The fireplace shushes.\r\nFlooding begins. There is a higher-pitched bird call. The wind may be reduced - or is it that trees that used to shade my bedstead are no longer rustling, talking, are dead. A crash of a tree brings me to my feet for the hundredth time. A small bird flies. And I venture outside into a tropical storm smelling of palm trees, saltwater, beaches. But I soon return to shelter. The trees did fall because I heard them. Nature has been re-landscaped.\r\nGone are trees of the eastern front, died sheltering the house. Now comes the hurricane west wind. I smell the oily sap of bleeding trees. A western window rattles. Now the western line of water oaks are shorn of all their leaves and acorns and look naked as January, ghosts of themselves. There is a high-pitched bird cry.\r\nLater comes wind from the south. The sky continues opaque gray, buffeting the leather-leaved magnolia. But this tree evolved prior to the oaks. Maybe the world was stormier then, for the magnolia holds onto its leaves. \r\nI think of artist Walter Anderson toward the end of his life, surviving a hurricane on an island under his overturned rowboat. \r\nAt 12:45 an un-nailed door blows open. Surely on the other side of the world this is the calmest day. Where once there was a baroque view of luxurious vines everywhere, there is now a stark Zen landscape of pines, standing lonely, deformed against a gray background, needle bunches hanging forlornly down, stubs where branches were. \r\nI open the north porch door and frighten a family of three cardinals or more - father, daughter who were sheltered, clinging to an oak branch blocking my front door.\r\nWhoosh goes the invisible force – spinning, spiraling whipped cream clouds with a cherry in the middle. My head spins.\r\nIn the mica gray sky whoa whoa whoa call the trees but the wind won\'t stop, the invisible foe who shakes you to death, knocks you to the ground, roots up for all to see. It sounds a thousand trains; it was one hurricane. \r\nFloodwaters are all around, surged up a few inches from Lake Pontchartrain, and still the clouds move. At 5:20 p.m. the sun peeks through, the birds fly and a squirrel is running down a tree. The cardinals hover and alight, checking their huge horizontal trees. As sunset approaches there is a normal breeze and the frogs croak.\r\n The ritual is over and now I am part of Louisiana.\r\nLucy Wells Tierney\r\n985 649-7870\r\n215 Michigan Ave.\r\nSlidell, LA 70458-2729