Rooting for the underdog

The hailstones came down like
meteorites. They crashed against the house and whistled through the
trees, ripping and shredding as if their icy edges were honed
razor-sharp.

I stood behind the screen door and watched
as the clear fiberglass roofing on the front porch was torn,
twisted and obliterated, bits and pieces of fiberglass flying
through the air like shredded lettuce in a food processor.

It went on and on — 10 minutes, then 15, maybe 20
in all. When it was over, a two-inch thick layer of leaves had been
ripped from the trees and littered the front yard, intermingling
with another three inches of white, crystalline hail. Splintered
fiberglass lay in a 15-foot circle around the porch.

I
walked to the backyard. My wife’s just-blooming garden was
mere stalks and spindles. Broccoli gone, lettuce gone, the rhubarb
looked like asparagus — leafless green bones jutting into the
air. I peered at the backyard greenhouse — its south-facing
wall also made of clear fiberglass — and it looked like
I’d stood in front of it with a sledge hammer and pounded.

I felt quiet, peaceful. Subdued. The truth? It was
awesome. I was rooting for nature.

I find myself doing
this at other times, too. Earthquakes, mudslides, wildfires,
volcanoes — I watch them all on TV, quietly rooting.
Honestly, global warming’s got me thinking.

Now,
don’t get me wrong. I’m not an anti-humanist, a
misanthrope. I have a family, kids in school — wonderful kids
who I love dearly. I have great friends and neighbors who I invite
over for parties. I volunteer, donate and even opine in the local
newspaper about our fair city’s humanistic struggles. I love
people, and get terribly lonely when they’re not around. And
when natural disaster strikes — even across the globe —
I donate. And, of course, I don’t want anyone to get hurt,
and I especially don’t want anyone I know to get hurt.

I just don’t love people more than everything else,
at the cost of everything else, which seems to be the cost,
nowadays. And so I find myself rooting for the underdog.

When the insurance adjuster came a week later to see my porch roof
and greenhouse, he was looking a little tired and stressed. He
lived in Montana, and had been called down here to Fort Collins,
Colo., to deal with this hailstorm. He’d been in town for a
week, working 16-hour days, staying in hotels, climbing on roofs,
taking pictures, punching numbers into his computer and rendering
financial verdicts.

The south end of town got hit the
hardest. “Golf-ball sized,” he said. Wood-shingled houses took a
big hit, cars were dented. In one case, a three-hour-old Mercedes
Benz was bombarded as its owner stood crying at the picture window,
afraid for her life to run outside and drive the car into the
garage.

We surveyed the damage and talked about the
carnage. His tired eyes lit up as we talked. Adjectives flowed,
arms pointed and swept. “Look at that tree,” I said, its spindly
branches completely shredded of leaves.

We found
fiberglass 30 feet away from the porch. On the roof, he pointed out
dents in the aluminum vents. He showed me how hail beats the sand
coating off of asphalt shingles. He told stories of hail damage
around his district in the Western United States. He talked of
tornadoes and windstorms and destruction I had only seen on
television. Surveying devastation was his job. I was mesmerized.

As we neared the backyard greenhouse, our eyes jumped
over to its splintered fiberglass wall. My youngest daughter had
planted dozens of sunflowers inside the greenhouse earlier in the
spring, and several had poked their heads out the hail-holes and
were searching the southern sky. It was as if the sunflowers had
caused the damage, broken through the fiberglass, free. Is this
what nature is up to – freeing itself?

I looked at
the insurance adjuster. He was poised, tape measure in hand,
notebook waiting. I caught his eye. “The storm,” I said, “was
awesome.”

He paused, and with the slightest of smiles,
said, “I know.”