Measuring the human debris in Ivan’s wake...

CENTURY -

You can go home again — but in the wake of Hurricane Ivan, you might not recognize it.
In the land of my roots, there are forests of broken trees, acres of pines snapped or twisted off at 10 or 15 feet. Houses and mobile homes bisected by centuries-old oaks. Tin roofs peeled back. Gravestones disturbed. Cars smashed by a collapsed garage roof or metal shed. A city park, no longer shaded, but rather decimated by the pines dropped all across it.
We made a 5½-hour trek via detours through Alabama to reach northern Escambia County last weekend. Many miles of road were reduced to one dangerous lane, skipping around fallen trees that protruded into the roadway. A plague of love bugs swarmed.
We carried generators and ice, gasoline and nonperishable food. We had family in the area with whom we had managed only spotty communication since Ivan had crushed the earth underfoot.
It’s a world with no power or phones, no ice or clean water. People were living off of Meals Ready to Eat and ice supplied by the National Guard. Those who didn’t have a generator lay in their sweat at night and listened jealously to the humming sounds carrying through the night from elsewhere in the neighborhood.
And then there was no gas to run the generators. Tempers flared. People lost hope. Cars and trucks of every description were abandoned on highway shoulders, where they had run out of gas while driving in search of gas.
"We heard they had gas here," said a woman who pulled up to a Guard supply post in an SUV. She was downcast when she learned the gas was for emergency vehicles only.
The stories were frightening. My dad rode out Fredrick, but he said the next time a hurricane came within a hundred miles, he would be headed a thousand miles in the other direction. Never again, he said, looking out his window at massive magnolias that fell just inches from his house. Never.
My uncle described seeing his car levitate in the back yard, then settle back into place.
And there were strange blessings: More than once, we saw tiny wooden houses unscathed in the center of a ring of gigantic fallen oak or pecan trees, any one of which would have destroyed the home.
And others: Hummingbirds swarming around a feeder on Saturday afternoon; spiced apple dessert in a chemically heated MRE; the hug of a school friend’s mother when she recognized me after 20 years.
You can go home again. Some things never change.
Peace.

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(This column originally appeared Sunday, Sept. 26, 2004, as my weekly "Undercurrents" column in The News Herald, Panama City, FL.)