Battle Fatigue

 The insects went mad a couple of days before the storm, Irene.  The night before I left I walked around outside in the dark with just the porch light on and loud bugs were dive bombing me.  They seemed disoriented and in a panic, like "take me too!"   They reminded me of my own fast pace that week.    I saw wasps that were not at nests but sucked up to the side of plants that I was bringing inside.  When tried to brush them away they were stuck like glue but would release and fly away after bothered.  All the insects that talk, were talking, more like yelling.  One yelled so loud I ran away before realizing it was just a bug.   All day Saturday was blissful sleep away from the excitement and recovery.  I'm beginning to realize with this blog that it sounds as though there's nobody here but me and the bugs.  Funny, not quite as isolated as all that. 

 Snow storms are mental health and hurricanes are mental breakdowns.  Outside of personal devastations Irene did some good; dredged out Oregan Inlet,  I heard, for better boat traffic.  Mostly put out the big Suffolk fire with 10 inches of rain and did in one night what the firefighters could not do in weeks.  DOT has repairs down to a fine art from having to do it every single time...chop, chop... will be done in no time at all.   I have concern for Hatteras, still isolated from the world with few phones, no power, no road, provisions that were stored up.  Their isolation is both the beauty and the beast.       OBX'ers are the best people in the world and will help out anybody, repeated often after the storms. So true, so true.   Where we live makes that an act of survival.  But that kind of repeated comments heard again and again over the years seems a reinforcement in isolating from others, without meaning to. 

 

That being said..... by this mountain girl who refuses to become a beach girl.  Maybe I'm the one being nicely isolating?  hmmm.