Last summer, a little town in Northern Wisconsin and much of the surrounding territory was hit by an extremely strong wind storm. It decimated huge patches of woods and sent trees crashing through countless homes, cabins, barns, and buildings. 

My parents live right outside that little town. Luckily, the bizarre and random combination of meteorological forces that hit the area spared their property. They lost a few trees, but their forty acres were pretty much intact. 

It’s not just the feeling of desolation, which hangs over the landscape like a grey fog. I also get a feeling of ... embarrassment. I feel somewhat mortified, and I imagine the land feeling mortified, too.

Meanwhile, a large stand of woods right next to my parent’s land – just a few dozen feet away, across an old country road – had been twisted and churned into a massive tangle of tree trunks and dirt-caked root systems, yanked up out of the earth. 

I’ve never lived up there, but I’ve spent my entire life visiting the area. It’s where most of my family grew up. Seeing that patch of woods destroyed was horrible. We used to hunt in there and I always liked walking through it.   It had great old trees and little ravines. Sure, I never saw many deer back in there, but I didn’t really care.  

And now it’s gone. Most of the wind-damaged forests in the region have been logged out, leaving behind ugly stretches of land. The property next to my parents’ house has been transformed into a giant stump field. Seeing it still jars me. We’ll be driving to my mom and dad’s place for the weekend, and as we turn off the highway ... bam. It’s hard to see.

It’s not just the feeling of desolation, which hangs over the landscape like a grey fog. I also get a feeling of ... embarrassment. It’s like accidentally seeing your best friend’s mom naked – you just shouldn’t lay eyes on that. I feel somewhat mortified, and I imagine the land feeling mortified, too. Its shape used to be hidden away by the trees. You needed to walk through it time and time again to understand how it worked. Now you just see everything. 

My awful sense of direction and less-than-adept sense of spacial relations only adds to my bizarre feelings. Looking out over these stump fields, I’m constantly surprised at how close buildings and roads are to each other. When there’s a tall stand of trees in my way, it feels like things are miles and miles apart. But they aren’t. 

To sum up, seeing that piece of land makes me feel desolate, naked, and shrunken. It’s a big, awkward cocktail of emotions. I’m just so thankful my mom and dad have still got their trees. 

All of this has been on my mind a lot since the May 24 windstorm blew through Eau Claire, leaving some of our most beautiful parks, cemeteries, and boulevards in a big, splintered mess. Driving through certain parts of Carson Park, I get the same mix of emotions as I do up North, but mostly I’m just glad it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I think we got really lucky. Relatively speaking.

And, of course, the way everyone pitched in to clean up Lakeview Cemetery in time for Memorial Day was fantastic. Up around my parent’s place, everyone with a chainsaw started clearing roads and opening up each other’s driveways. There was no way the county crews could possibly keep up with the damage, and people immediately started helping each other, making sure their neighbors were alright and could get out of their houses.

So when the storm hit and the trees got ripped down, you could see more than people’s freshly exposed houses. You could also see their selflessness and compassion for one another. You could see their natural impulse to protect family and friends. This is what stands out to me most of all – more than the mangled tree trunks and the stump fields. Mother Nature may have needed to tear down a few forests, but the people were left standing.