When The Trees Explode

What I learned about love in an ice storm

In 1996, my wife and I were new parents living the American dream in debt and in a small but brand new house that was ours, all ours. I framed it with the help of my dad and his crew. It wasn’t fancy, but it was home. It was nestled on a road with a few others in a wooded section of northern Iredell County, NC.

Life was busy then, working long hours and trying our best to be good parents, for which we had zero training.

That winter was cold, really cold. Weather forecasting was not nearly as accurate then. There was not much of an internet. I didn’t own a cell phone because they were too expensive.

I remember someone telling me the weatherman was calling for a winter storm.

My wife and I both love snow, and as Southerners we had many childhood memories of getting out of school, sledding, and playing all day outside in the cold. Wet snow boots by the door and warm food and drink during breaks in the action. Folks in the south love snow for about 2 days, then we’re ready for 72 degree weather.

But in 1996, I became acutely aware of the very real danger of a winter storm in the South, and as a husband and new dad, the responsibility I had to provide protection for my family when no one else was coming. Geographically we live along the I-40 Corridor which if you live here is a magical line where when winter weather comes, north of that stretch of road statistically has more snow but south of there more of the icy stuff. And we live right on the line, so it was always generally a coin flip.

We were hoping for a big snow. The weather started moving in. Temperatures dropped to well below freezing. It was late in the afternoon. I went outside and the gauge read 26 degrees, but instead of snow, it was a torrential rain. Around our house was nothing but forest, and along the side of the road there were hundreds of tall white pines and various hardwoods.

I knew we might be in for a rough night, and I was hoping the power would stay on. About two hours later, my hopes were dashed as everything went dark. Luckily, when I built our house, we installed a big fireplace. I grew up with fires in the fireplace, and splitting firewood defined my childhood. That day I had prepositioned seasoned firewood in our garage, and I had a woodpile under a tarp outside. Work I had done weeks and months before. This illustrates that preparation is not a reactionary activity. It’s ongoing.

I built the fire and the rains came and kept coming. We had no communication with the outside world. Tammy bundled Tori up in a blanket near the fireplace where the warmth was strongest. We read books and talked, but I was worried about the storm. I checked and stoked the fire. I realized my only job was to keep my bride and my new baby warm. The sense of responsibility fueled my focus.

Tammy and Tori drifted off to sleep with our dog, Austin. They were curled up on the floor in a mass of blankets and pillows, snug as a bug. I just looked at them with the aid of a bunch of candles. It was cold all over the house, and I couldn’t sleep. I prayed and kept the fire hot, which required multiple trips outside. I was worried I’d fall asleep and let the fire go out, and I’d wake up to find my wife and child had frozen to death. I realize that sounds irrational now, but that’s not the point. More on that in a bit.

And then I heard it. It was about two or three in the morning. It sounded like a cannon. So loud. The house shook. Then another. I went outside, but the darkness prevented me from seeing what was happening. I will never forget the sound. Every five to ten minutes, boom. I realized the sound I was hearing was eighty to one hundred year old trees snapping at the trunk under the weight of the ice. It was relentless and unnerving. The trees were exploding, and that is not an exaggeration. Looking back now the sound was similar to explosions I heard in Iraq except more indiscriminate.

Somehow my wife, daughter, and dog got the rest they needed, and they didn’t freeze to death. But I didn’t sleep. My mind wandered to times past when all of life was survival, and every day for generations of families held peril. The modern world has softened us to the dangers of the environment we live in. It only takes an extreme weather event to remind us that modern life is, in many ways, an illusion.

Technology has brought incredible advances for the good of humanity. But there’s no app on your phone for when trees explode.

We made it through the night, thankfully, and at first light I ventured outside. The ice was everywhere. 2 foot icicles hung from the eves of our house. The driveway and road was a skating rink. And the trees were still exploding. It was an incredible sight. It looked like a tornado had come barreling through. Trees were down in the woods, in my yard, and across the pavement, blocking us from leaving since we lived on a dead-end road.

Thankfully, I had a chainsaw, and a neighbor met me in the middle. We started to work. Hours later, we had a narrow path through the debris to get out to my mom’s house, where they had not lost power. We stayed with her for a week before heading back home.

A few things stuck with me from that night and have served me well. It’s too late to prepare for crisis in the midst of crisis. My dad had always talked about being prepared, and thank goodness I listened to him. I also realized that while my entire focus was on keeping my wife and daughter safe, I wasn’t concerned about politics or current events. In case you didn’t know, even in the 90s folks thought the world was ending, just like they do today. In that moment, we were just three people in the middle of a storm, scared to death, praying, and trying to stay warm. Nothing else mattered, and I felt afraid but very alive.

But what I remember most about that night was love. I was a new dad and a fairly new husband. I had experienced an epiphany of sorts in my spiritual life a few years earlier. I read the Bible voraciously and was entranced by the idea that God, my Father, would love me. That night, I experienced the depth of what it feels like to love as a father. I would have died to keep that little girl and my young wife alive. I came to a new understanding of the Father’s love and the depths He would go.

If I, a broken, flawed, finite, powerless, frail, sometimes angry, sometimes sad, wounded man could love my daughter and my wife that much, how does that compare to the Father’s love? That night I realized it was incomparable, and it produced in me such a sense of hope that every forecast for freezing rain reminds me of it.

So when the storm comes, the air turns frigid, ice forms, and the trees explode, I hope you know this:

The Father loves you far more than keeping a fire going on a cold winter’s night.

Weather on