Timber and Wind

Lightning flashed overhead as the wind battered my weathered frame. I swayed back and forth from the ferocity of it. Above me swirled a churning mass of cloud and thunder. It was a nasty front; a Kansas supercell of biblical proportion. The kind of storm that can alter the world forever. So it was to be for me.

When, off in the distance, I saw the first tendrils of air coalesce into a thick brown funnel and touch down, I knew it was the end. Twisting and skipping its way towards me, the tornado grew larger and stronger with every passing second. It was soon a wall of sheer wind and power, a finger of God stretching down from the heavens to demolish all before it. I was directly in its path, and I knew my time was at hand.

I had come into the world over a hundred years prior in the middle of a sweltering Kansas summer. The final product of necessity on a farm full of children worked to the bone from the moment they could hold a spade. The same fate was in store for me, as I was put to work the very instant I could stand up on my own. And that was the way things went for me for a very long time. Summer gave way to winter, and winter once again become summer. Years passed and our farm family changed with each passing season. Livestock was butchered, and crops were reaped. The older children moved away as soon as they were able, and eventually, the younger ones did too. Wars, famines, and floods came and went. The world changed around me, and yet I remained constant. I may have groaned and creaked more as the years passed and the work persisted, but I never left.

At some point, due to the passing of the farmer and his wife, I became the steward of the land. That didn’t change much though, as it had been years since they did anything besides sit inside the house. I was left to my own devices, which suited me fine. Lazy summer days and snowy winter nights were equally welcome as far as I was concerned, and I enjoyed countless of each. But just like those that came before me, as I aged I began to find less pleasure in the little things. What was once beautiful and vibrant became tired and weathered. This was true of myself most of all, both inside and out. The fields and pastures around me became thick and wild as they were left untended. Rodents, and birds, and insects began to call the place home. We were becoming choked with parasites and vandals, the farm and I.

It was at this point in my story that the storm bore down upon me. Out on the land that I called home my entire life, decrepit and frail, I had nowhere to hide and nowhere to turn to. As the freight train of a storm approached and the first pieces of debris slammed into my broad side, the memories of a century within these walls unfolded before me. I saw calves and piglets born, then cows and sows butchered. Bales of hay, sacks of corn, and heaps of lettuce.

Debris blasted a hole through one of my walls, and I was reminded of similar storms that had come and gone. In years passed the farmer had been here to patch the damage and keep me whole, but that wouldn’t happen this time. I remembered the gatherings and celebrations held under my eaves. Weddings, and birthdays, and nights full of joy and laughter. The howling wind rushed inside and shook me to my foundation. A single plank from my roof peeled away and soared off into the night. Children and farm hands, family and old friends, I reminisced over the lives come and gone. A peace came to me then, knowing that I had lived much, and I had served a valuable purpose in the lives of so many. It was a fitting end for me, and one that I could accept.

More planks ripped from their lofty home, and bits of rural living erupted through my walls like slugs from a shotgun. Rats, and mice, and voles scurried away from their nests within the corners of my foundation as the storm overtook us. Abandoned by the very last creatures to call my rickety gable home, I felt a true emptiness fill me for the first time ever. Panic welled up within me as my final moments approached, and I began to desperately hope for reprieve.

Maybe I could withstand the storm. The winds rose, screaming from within me, and my entire roof lifted away. I heard it crash to the ground far away, as my walls disintegrated from the aerial onslaught of wind, hail, and shrapnel.

Maybe it would be okay. Maybe someone would come. Maybe someone could fix me.

With my frame completely exposed, beams creaked and moaned. They twisted and curled in the violent night.

My rafters fall. Darkness descends.