Two weeks ago we had a storm come through my city. This is not entirely unusual in the Pacific Northwest, and it is winter after all. But this type was unusual in that we were hit with a severe wind storm followed immediately by a snow and ice storm. As some of you know, it doesn’t take much to cripple Portland when true wintry conditions hit, and this storm did just that, shutting the place down for a week.
As things blew over (pun intended), the damage was apparent and a shock to the system. Downed trees, power outages for days, slippery streets, and a city that rarely seems to know how to handle such things. News reports began to come out about my favorite place in the whole city — Mt. Tabor Park — and it wasn’t good.
Mt. Tabor is special. A large bump in the earth that is an extinct volcano, it sits at just over 600 feet elevation (190 m) and has multiple trails through a beautifully wooded terrain. All the way around it you get commanding views of the city. It’s a runner’s, walker’s, dog’s, daydreamer’s, and nature lover’s haven. I only live a couple miles away, and it has been a special place in my heart for years.
Yesterday I went up to the park for the first time since the storm to see what had happened, and it was a stark reminder of the raw power of nature. I have been coming to this place for my entire life, and I’d never seen it in such a state. Tall, beautiful, stately Douglas fir trees simply toppled over like so many dominoes. Giant beauties with their root balls exposed. The picnic shelter where I had my birthday party a few years ago now in a pile, the victim of one of those trees.
It brought up all kinds of feelings: Awe at the level of force. Shock at the scope. Sadness for what is now lost. Curiosity and hope for what is now to come.
And it wasn’t that it’s so tragic seeing trees downed — that happens as a matter of course as things die and decay. Mt. Tabor is full of logs that were once majestic trees, now lying peacefully on the ground slowly becoming part of it, or standing as “snags.” Both of them providing life and shelter for many other beings in the ecosystem.
The shock of it was how quickly it happened. The jolt to the system you get when everything goes from being as it has been for a very long time one day to being completely different the next. “Here today, gone tomorrow,” as they say. The suddenness of it a blunt reminder of the fleeting nature of life.
It just so happened that earlier in the day I had read my friend Mathias’ new translation of the poem Völuspá. It’s a beautiful, yet unnerving piece from the pre-Christian Nordic world, and my favorite poem that has survived from the time. It recounts the prophecies of a seeress/witch who gets raised from the dead to tell of the creation of the cosmos, but more importantly of its ultimate destruction during the event that has become well-known in modern pop culture: Ragnarök.
Ragnarök is a terrifying time when the world shakes, natural disasters abound such as storms, earthquakes, floods, and fires, and the bonds between humans rupture and break. If you can´t help but think this pretty much sounds like where we are in the world right now, you´re not alone. Standing amidst the destruction at Mt. Tabor certainly felt a little like the beginnings of that cataclysmic end from which, in the Viking Nordic mind, there was no escape.
In Völuspá’s very first stanza, the seeress reminds us of her authority to speak of these things:
Silence I ask of all holy kin, greater and lesser
descendants of Heimdall,
Valfodr, you want me to tell of ancient wisdom,
the first I remember.
Mathias deciphers this for us in his summary of the poem: “She begins by explaining that she is as old as time itself…[and] asks all of mankind, the descendants of Heimdall, to listen to her.”
This gave me pause. I believe it means she’s telling us she knows what will happen by way of warning us, because she’s been around forever and has seen it before. At least I want that to be true, because she tells us the earth is doomed to sink into the sea. Fade to black. End scene. BUT! She also sees another earth come to life from the wreckage, green and fresh. The surviving gods find each other, remember their past, and begin to build the world once again.
Like in the poem, visiting the park reminded me that the power of nature can be destructive and terrifying, but it also has within it the power to heal and emerge anew. It always finds a way, and maybe we can too.
It also reminded me that when in the presence of forces much larger and greater than myself, I recognize just how small we are and how precious little control we actually have over our lives. It’s probably natural to be a bit worried and afraid about that. But I have never been a glass-half-empty, worrier-type of person. Instead, the devastation in the park and the power of the poem make me feel a sense of surrender but also hope.
My Icelandic friends have a phrase for it: Þetta reddast.
Ultimately, everything will be okay.
One need only to spend a significant amount of solitary time in nature to become impressed with both the power it has and the irrelevance you represent to it.