If The Sky Turns Green
“If I come back and my lights are on, you need to get to the bathrooms quick,” said the Park Ranger. He was talking to us out the window of a twenty-year-old truck, the bed containing an assortment of shovels, rakes, dented buckets, and hay. The Ranger’s khaki shirt had a stain on the cuff and, I imagine, just about everywhere else.
It was an oppressively humid day in Central Arkansas on a lake ringed with rainbow-layered shale. The kind of afternoon with a heavy stillness that comes before the winds that wrap themselves in a circle and twist.
We nodded in agreement with the Ranger’s instructions. He and my partner looked up at the sky and then down to their phones at the colorful radar readouts. I glanced at the cinderblock bathroom structure and frowned. That fabricated masonry might only hold up to a certain wind speed.
After their meterological assessment was complete, my partner thanked the Ranger. Along with our two boys, we stowed all the loose objects around the campsite.
“We know a thing or two about tornadoes; they are flighty, they are mercurial, and most of the time they pass right over where they are supposed to land.”
This was not the gold star preparation it might seem because we were camping in tornado alley in the spring with a popup trailer. If you’ve never seen one, it’s a glorified tent on a single-axle metal box. The canvas bits fold up and the lid-also-roof closes when traveling. In picking a shelter for a massive windstorm, this is what not to choose. It’s top-heavy, it’s made of canvas, and it’s fairly light as trailers go. This is a boon on the road when pulling it uphill with the Subaru; it is not when severe weather is threatening to uncouple you from the ground.
My partner and I both eye the trailer with the experience of living in Oklahoma for the balance of our lives. We know a thing or two about tornadoes; they are flighty, they are mercurial, and most of the time they pass right over where they are supposed to land. We both know this, but it’s different when you’re separated from the outside world by a layer of canvas.
We pack both the trailer and the car as if we’ll need to break down very quickly. It goes acknowledged but unsaid that the car might be the only thing that remains. Out of earshot of the boys, we agree on which child each of us will take if we need to run for it. I judge the wind direction – although in a real storm, it won’t much matter because it comes from everywhere all at once – and find a gulley that could provide some protection should the cinder block restrooms not hold.
“You’d think we would be the only ones insane enough to remain but you would be wrong. Weather is tricky and Midwesterners are jaded. ”
At that point on our adventures we had been threatened with storms and poor conditions so many times and had come through all of them unscatched. We discussed leaving but nowhere else in driving distance would be safer since this line of storms swept all the way across the state.
You’d think that we would be the only ones nuts enough to remain but you would be wrong. But weather is tricky and Midwesterners are jaded. Two hours previous, a group of teenage boys arrived two sites down and began their setup with tents fresh from Walmart. They had spent the intervening time determining how the poles and the flies and the flaps all went together. We thought for sure the ranger’s tone would convince them to pack it in but these were boys of the age where bravery and hormones were far too loud to allow retreat.
My partner asked if they needed help and I was also curious if I would be responsible for assisting more than just my two boys. “We’re fine!” They waved and grinned. At least they had enthusiasm.
The evening darkened and not because it was time - the heavy grey clouds had arrived. I pulled a the deck of cards (the ultimate choice for non-technology, lightweight, time passage) and we played go fish until we had to turn the trailer’s lights on. All four of us eyed the wind speed detected by the anemometer we had affixed to the outside of the trailer for just this reason.
In these storms, the wind comes and goes which is almost worse than a constant blow. The cards would skate across the table with a particularly strong gust as the weather readout number climbed from fifteen to twenty-five to thirty-five. The trailer was rocking back and forth but that wasn’t unusual, it did the same thing when any of us stepped inside.
The boys were grinning with the excitement of the storm but their eyes were glassy. Radar said this was the leading edge and the big event wouldn’t arrive for another hour so I laid down with one of them on each side to encourage sleep. In the end it probably wasn’t my presence but the half day of kayaking that worked the magic.
I opened my eyes to the flapping of canvas and my partner shaking my shoulder. Knowing this likely meant an emergency, I extricated myself quickly but carefully. Because if it wasn’t a tornado I sure as hell didn’t want to have to get them back to sleep.
“What’s wrong?” I asked urgently.
“The gazebo," he said. I looked outside and sure enough, the octagonal tent we set up to exclude bugs and harsh sun was missing. This was an item we debated taking down but he had argued for its “bombproof”-ness.
“Dammit,” I answered while putting on my jacket. We both stepped outside into the fierce missiles of rain. “Is it in someone else’s site?” I asked, picturing our gazebo rolling into another campsite like a waterproof tumbleweed.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Oh my god…” and both of us had discovered that the lantern pole just outside our trailer had a visitor. The gazebo had blown into one of the few structures strong enough to hold it against the prevailing winds.
We both rushed to unwrap it but found the pole had embedded itself into the fabric, enough our combined strength couldn’t unseat it. Then I said, “what would we do with it if we did get it off?” We stopped wrestling and went back inside the trailer, but not before seeing that the teenagers had formed a human wall against the wind in order to keep their tent upright. The wind was strong enough that I could see the outlines of their bodies. It looked like they had all crammed themselves into a communal and comically large rain jacket. My partner ran over to them, asking for the second time in the space of a few hours – “are you okay?” “Great!” they answered. I might have seen a thumbs up through the tent. Ah, youth.
“It made the night pass with a sharper coherence. It might have been our last night with the trailer, after all. ”
The wind kept up but opted not to form into a tornado that night. On waking, we discovered that the only casualty in our campground loop was our gazebo. We went to the pad where it had been sitting to find all of the grommets through which we had hammered the stakes sitting in a perfect circle. They had been neatly severed by the wind, thus initiating its short but mighty flight.
As with many aftermaths of upheaval, the next day was bluebird. We took the kayaks out again and marveled at the glassy lake that had only recently sported whitecaps. I went into the cinder block bathrooms in order to actually use the restroom and not to take shelter. We waved at the ranger in the rusted old pickup truck and we were quite grateful that he never had to flash his lights.
I don’t miss much about the Midwest but there’s something about the buildup to a wicked storm. It makes it easy to choose the things that are important – not many of our possessions made the cut it our last-ditch car packing job. It made the night pass with a sharper coherence. It might have been our last night with the trailer, after all.
Where we are now, spring won’t arrive for another month at least. The storms are snowy and lovely in their own way, but I do miss a good Plains thunderstorm.
Inspired by events in Lake Ouachita State Park, Arkansas
Share to