Natalie Goldberg Deck: Card #10

“Write about the weather.”

Photo by Tina Lear

I’m working through the Natalie Goldberg deck of writing subjects. Each card in this world-renowned author and zen teacher’s Deck contains a writing topic on one side and a short lesson on the reverse, delivered in Natalie’s honest, heartfelt urgency. “This is my wish for you:” she says. “[T]hat you take these cards, grab the topic on one side and write, write, write . . . Remember no good or bad. Just words on the page.”

Write about the weather. There are so many weather moments I could write about. The Wyoming winter where we had weeks of 58 degrees below zero (without the wind chill factor). And my first Tuscan summers in 100 degree weather with no air conditioning — how I learned to suss out the cool pockets in the olive grove, behind the buildings, and how I sometimes had to just strip naked and lie down on top of the sheets, waiting out the afternoon furnace, sometimes bathing in a luke warm bath to cool off.

But Hurricane Sandy. That was weather with a capital W. Here is an excerpt from the journal I kept. It’s from sometime during the nine days we were without power.

When Sandy clocked in for his shift and the power went out.

The word “wind” doesn’t begin to describe it. Neither does “raging wind.” Any emotional or descriptive adjective…