Nature Bites Back

We have come to expect, and even take for granted, that nature will show us its beautiful calming face. This is one reason we love our time here in Tangerine Woods. Sometimes nature does things we don’t like and Hurricane Ian was one of those things, a force of nature, a force majeure. Every year we watch TV as these scary events go whizzing by and we thank our Indian Mound prayers for protecting us. But like the lottery, sometimes we win and sometimes not. This time we did not.

Hurricanes are a large-scale meteorological event. Its purpose is to transfer energy from the tropics north towards the pole. How global warming affects the frequency and intensity is an area of science we are learning about firsthand. But none the less, it is nature.

Hurricanes can cause damage beyond what we are prepared to handle or understand, physically or emotionally. The wind and water took up the stuff we love, scattering and destroying it, leaving only memories and a lot of work to do. But we humans are very lucky to be a species able to adapt rapidly and recover from these events. Our best example of fighting chaos with energy is our Lazy Dayz group and the support of the Lazy Daisies.

I write this column for Tangerine Topics and I have also accepted the task of overseeing the Tangerine Woods Nature Preserve. This is the wooded area on the left just north of the Lateral. At this time it is not a place to take a relaxing walk down its main trail enjoying the near quiet and looking for wildlife. Many, many trees, large and small are fallen or broken. The purpose of the Nature Preserve is to see nature as it does what it does. And this is what it did and it should remain as nature presented it to us. With the help of Lazy Dayz, I hope, the path will be cleared and made safe again so that we can take a stroll at the pace you prefer. But we will leave the trees and vegetation debris where it fell. The birds and animals that call it home prefer that we leave it this way. The only thing we will do is try to remove the man-made debris blown there. I am expecting that Sarasota County workers, when they have the time, will clear the drainage lateral to maintain normal water flow, as required by the easement they are responsible for.

I hope that all of us TW residents will be able to find ways to adapt to the changes we are enduring. I guarantee that nature will find a way. We are taught about entropy, the tendency in the universe for matter to lose energy and evolve into disorder. We were delt a dose of that with Ian. But life is the only exception I am aware of to entropy’s effects. From chaos we will make order, and life will go on.

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