On a day like so many others, icy cold at night, then mild and Spring like during the day, a storm gathered over our heads. To the East, the sky was clear and calm,  but to the West, grey and threatening.
On the TV Â weather station, a small dot, very small, indicated rain, but nothing like the deepening blackness that pressed closely over our heads.
Trying to grasp the reason in the sky that was not at all like the image on TV, I returned to the full length glass door. Day had become like night with no moon, the trees groaned and bent to the ground then rose, creaking to the dance of the wind.
Just then, at my husband’s hand, Â the blinds dropped before my eyes, a roar filled the air, our home’s steady, sure embrace shook, and the lights went out.
With great care and ease, I, we, opened the door to see and feel the torrent of rain and a live electric wire down and hopping with the wind’s work on a tree limb that it had tangled around.
Another tree, at that time an unknown (to us) Species, had wrapped around the Sycamore, like a spiraling downward S, taking branches down to their fall on the electrical wire that came from the Transformer through the air to its rest at the edge of our home’s roof.
Later, with the Insurance Adjuster, we learned the spiraling tree’s species, one that only grew eight tenths of a mile away. We photographed where  electrical Arcs had left their burns, and measured length and reach of the wire that bounced death.
Were it not for the Sycamore, of considerable diameter and height, the wind borne tree would have followed its path to, and possibly into the door where I stood. Too, was the very really possibility, that the Live wire would have snaked its way to my harm.
I am grateful for our Sycamore Tree.
Abbey of Gratitude 