Storm of the Kodak Moment

Lad Moore

The worst storm ever rolled mercilessly out of Pamlico Sound---its darkness giving the scattering of snowy gulls on Lake Mattamuskeet an eerie contrast---like styrofoam sailing against black velvet. At the bottom of the encroaching wall, as if a rising curtain, fifty feet of jade-green sky boiled in rile like yesterday's jimmy crabs.

In an instant, tents were billowing like flapping towels pinned to a clothesline. Coffeepot parts mixed with Doritos-Chip missiles in the air, appropriate to the cries of alarm and the barking of a very confused Quigley---scuttling to the safety of the cement culvert. People still in nightclothes were scrambling---as would ants, disturbed by sudden exposure of their hiding place. Lightening shards sent tracers in the early dawn---illuminating clouds that bulged with rain and stones of ice.

White golf-ball hail began to pepper the Jeep Cherokee---the one weather sin I could not forgive. Despite my protest, I had to yield in helplessness to the magnitude of the wrenching-out of the heavens.

My camera snapped the awesome power of the storm at its height, as raw nature humbled us to hide in the steel caves beneath the Fairfield Bridge.

It was over. I developed the storm photos that same day---could plain film do it justice? Yes, there it was---its fury truly captured in glows of green and streaks of yellow born of St. Elmo's fire. Now---when I say it was the biggest storm ever, I mean just that---huge!

The negative weighed four pounds.

Copyright ©2000 Lad Moore. All Rights Reserved.

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November, 2000 Issue #55

256 Words

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