Last Friday, I flew from Austin to Panama City Airport (ECP) to visit my parents and brother. My brother picked my up at the airport and we made the drive from Florida up to the lower southeast corner of Alabama where they live. As we drove, I observed that there is STILL damage visible from Hurricane Michael, a devastating CAT 5 storm that hit the Florida Panhandle back in October 2018. Never expecting that…
…we would be in the path of a hurricane now!
Yes, Hurricane Helene is currently approaching the Florida panhandle, this time drawing a bead on the Big Bend area of the coast. She’s expected to grow to a CAT 4 storm with tremendous, possibly record-setting storm surge along areas of the Florida coast. She’s a “big girl” too – a huge storm whose winds and rains have been hitting our area in Lower Alabama for the past four hours. With more to come.
Our impacts here are yet to be seen, but we’ve been told to expect CAT 1 or CAT 2 hurricane effects. Fortunately, we will be on the west side of the hurricane and not feel the full force about to be endured in Florida and Georgia. Nevertheless, we completed our preparations yesterday. The schools and many businesses are closed today or are closing early. We’re as ready as we can be.
I feel for those folks along the Florida coast, many of whom have endured an increasing number and severity of hurricanes in the past five years. Idalia is the one most cited by folks in the Big Bend area, especially along the barrier islands such as Cedar Key. I hope and pray these folks battened down the hatches as well as they could – and then got the hell out of there!
I understand the desire to stay and ride it out, in order to protect your home or business and be on the ground to begin recovery. We went through the same when my parents first retired and build their dream retirement home along the coast in North Carolina. The decision to stay or evacuate can be an agonizing one. You scrutinize each new update, trying to decipher whether you can ride it out safely OR you better leave. If you wait too long to make that decision, you then get stuck in massive traffic as folks evacuate. Or, worse yet, you are stuck and forced to ride it out.
One more data point: when I was age 9 to 11, we lived in Tallahassee, Florida. One of the key things I remember about living there is the proliferation of beautiful, stately trees. Especially the oaks with the Spanish moss hanging off the branches. Tallahassee will be right in the eye of this storm as it passes through. I fear many trees will be uprooted or damaged.
Anyways, I wish the best possible outcome to the people about to be impacted.
In the meantime, I did a little training out on the back porch. It’s the first time I can remember actually working out during a hurricane.
A little back story: It is said that the founder of Shotokan Karate, Funakoshi Gichin, would stand out on the roof of his house on Okinawa during monsoons (the Pacific ocean version of hurricanes). He would grip a tatami mat with both hands, which acted like a sail, and would strive to hold his horse stance on the roof.
As described by an observer and martial arts colleague:
“Now the young man on the roof assumed a low posture, holding the straw mat aloft against the raging wind. The stance he took was most impressive, for he stood as if astride a horse. Indeed, anyone who knew karate could readily have seen that the youth was taking the horse-riding stance, the most stable of all karate stances, and that he was making use of the howling typhoon to refine his technique and to further strengthen both body and mind. The wind struck the mat and the youth with full force, but he stood his ground and did not flinch.”
OK, I know my performing techniques and forms on my parents’ back porch – BEFORE the hurricane even arrives – is nothing like what Funakoshi did.
However, I can report that, energetically, training in the wind and rain felt different. It felt exhilarating. You can sense the current energy as well as the impending energies to come. I plan on periodically going outside for as long as I can and to breathe, stand, and experience the wind, energy, and power of Mother Nature.
Bless all of those in the path of this storm.
You Can Do It!
Dr. Karen