A Falling Tree                                                07/13/23
----------------------------------------------------------------------
It rained yesterday evening. The weather  has been wrong a lot lately,
but in  their defense they  did suggest that  we might get  rain. Yes,
they said between 8pm and 2am,  and we got it starting around 7pm--but
still pretty close.

When it blew in, I was at a local community center for a meeting. This
particular  community center  overlooks a  park, and  that park  has a
small lake  (well, the park is  mostly the lake, actually.)  The storm
blew in with force,  and it was enchanting to watch  the rain and wind
sweep over the water.

There  were about a dozen  people in  the meeting.  We were  receiving
training on  how to  help out  at the  community center  kitchen (they
serve free meals there for those who  need or want them, a few times a
week). We  were moving  between the  kitchen and  dining area;  in the
kitchen there was no  real view of the park, in  the dining area there
was a great one.

The rain didn't  last long, and after  being in the kitchen  for a bit
and returning to the  dining area, I could see that  the lake and park
were mostly  calm again.  I love  watching the  water after  the rain,
being something  of a fisherman; the  fish often like to  feed after a
rain in  lakes like that,  in my  limited experience. I  couldn't help
watching their rippling activity on the water.

Everyone else was  heading back to the kitchen again,  and I stayed in
the dining  room (I could  hear them  through the open  doorway), just
watching the park. In a sudden an jarring instant, the largest tree in
the park split toward the top,  and a huge portion came crashing down.
The trunk,  where it split, was  probably a few people  thick (I guess
people have varied thicknesses, so we'll say  it was as think as a few
of my own persons clinging to  one another in a strange tree-measuring
embrace).  You  could hear  it  snapping  to  pieces from  inside  the
building  as it  hit  the ground,  the water  on  the leaves  spraying
everywhere. All the small branches broke off it seemed, leaving a heap
of rubble in the park.

I must have reacted audibly, because a  few people came to ask me what
was going on. I told them, and we all gawked at the mess.

My son was with me, and he mentioned the proverbial tree in the woods.
We talked about the perception of sound being an individual thing, the
movement  of air,  etc.  It rained  a  little more  when  we left  the
building.