ZACK PASCAL

ENG220-036 MEMOIR ASSIGNMENT

 source MorgueFile.com http://mrg.bz/BwVDTJ

Nature’s Vendetta

            Back in yesteryear of 1991, March 10, I was the first born to my parents, born into the Clark Air Base hospital in the Philippines. The grand achievement of technology allowing my birth in the evening to be sent across the sea, and over the nebulous day line, this allowed my grandparents to brag at Church that I was born THIS evening THAT morning. But little did my family know the very earth beneath our feet sought our destruction.

            The first of nature’s campaign to strike out at me was swift on geological terms, through March of 1991 into early June magma rose towards the surface from inside Mount Pinatubo eventually causing three steam craters on the north flank of the volcano to be blown out sending great volumes of Sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. This took place far from the base but all in one terrifying go…The world shook and the people of the Philippines watched the end of the world happen as everything they lived for was blanketed in suffocating ash for the next 24 hours, black rain flowed through the pyroclastic and rang with thunder. The stone and fire coated the Philippines.

            When the sun finally graced the sundered earth it was coated in 2 feet of ejecta or what normal people call rocks and ash. This prevented all local services from functioning until the roads themselves were cleared. It was like if nature couldn’t kill me outright, it would starve me and the locals through infrastructure damage. With the first of nature’s attempts to take my life over my mother took me to the U.S Naval Base Subic Bay to take part in Operation Fiery Vigil which was clearly created to save me specifically from Mt. Pinatubo’s onslaught. Well that and 15,000 others of course. We were sent off on on the USS Mirrill, because the USS Abraham Lincoln which was a destroyer class ship. The boat was filled with pregnant women and children less than a year old.

            The young navy sailors suffered by sleeping at their stations as evacuated mothers and their children used their cramped but comparatively welcoming bunks for two days. The volcano wasn’t done and response to my successful escape let loose and damaged the US navy base so much that the USA didn’t reinstate the lease they had with the Philippine government. Me and my mother escaped from the looming shadow from the volcanic ash by stopping in Guam and being taken to Hawaii over the international date line leaving my mom without proper account of what happened there beyond a huge transport plane called a STAR LIFTER which is pretty cool by name alone.

            I have survived the most powerful of nature’s tools of destruction what was left to try and destroy me? Well true to form that was about the most dangerous nature could attempt to do to me. Nature started with a huge bang and seemingly couldn’t follow up the grand military operation to extract specifically me and fifteen thousand others. It took three months before my father was able to return and be with me and my mother.

            Now though? Years later there have been a few clear attempts on my life I just know it. The most insidious was the horses… In the small clearly representative sample of horses I have ridden all about 5, 2 have decided to sit down while I was on them, quickly after I was given a new horse to ride instead of being done. Though the 8 year old example of this event was probably close to a properly panicked child I would have ever personally have been.

            More recent accurate things I can say have all happened while I have lived here, in New Mexico. Nature’s tactics just have become more attrition based. Slowly our house is whittled down with hail and washed away with water run off that shouldn’t be happening. I have seen fire on the horizon with proper worries about maybe evacuating. And the slow and miserable allergy seasons that make me miserable even if it’s nowhere near lethal.

            The only active attempt in my teenaged years was mostly a bloodletting event, simple addition brings this grave event to light, I was riding my bike, plus going too fast, plus transitioning from pavement to gravel, and going downhill. I was left scared from the event…I mean literally I have a pretty nasty looking scar on my hip from where I got torn up the most from the fall. Seeing my own blood simply doesn’t faze me but seeing flesh torn is entirely new to a person who is frequented by nose bleeds in their youth

            During this last July I traveled with my mother and two siblings still living at home we went to witness and celebrate my brother and new brother in law in their marriage. This took place way in Minnesota and we drove there suffering the two days drive. The last leg of the drive I was in the driving seat and we saw this huge cloud front on the horizon for the last 2 hours. We constantly watched the leading edge of the storm looking for funnel clouds as our phones constantly gave us storm warnings. The storm poured hard enough that it flooded the roads and sent rain steeper than 45 degrees, great golf ball sized hail threatened the windshield and my siblings panicked. Thinking quickly we found refuge under the edge of a gravel transport truck. Due to the angle of the hail the truck completely protected us. We waited for the storm to pass and then carried on with the storm exhausted it was safe to continue. Clearly this exhausted nature’s attempts to take me out once more, but nature had one more trick to try and pull. On the way back still on the first day of the drive it was twilight and I was constantly watching the edges of the sprawling farm land and then I saw a deer. It was running parallel to us. I calmly declared “Deer, right side.” When it suddenly gained a death wish and darted in front of us. Thanks to my warning we managed to evade slaying the deer or and vehicle damage. We only had to use the actually good breaks of the car to give everyone in the vehicle a good stressful shock of the day to not kill the deer. The rest of the trip home was very uneventful.

            Nature despite its clear anti-social tendencies at trying to take make me isolationist. It won’t be nature doing it, it’ll be other people, and none of this nature stuff makes me panic as much as poor drivers. Signal lights, headlights simply not being used, or people drifting into my lane. I have had drivers syncing their movement while hanging out in my blind spot even when I deliberately shift speed to shove them out. The worse though that genuinely makes me worry are people changing lanes without checking blind spots which I deliberately try to stay out of.

            However even if I’ll never be fearful of nature it’s done its best with what it has left. After such a great opening act it is a bit disappointing the attempts now a days. A week ago it was a non-poisonous snake poised to startle me more than anything when it bolted away from me near the front door of home. It couldn’t have done more than startle me into tripping or something of that nature. But literally today nature one for clear originality tried the storm angle again and did indeed make me miserable. There is that point when water over saturates the pant legs and start to flow into your shoes that you just know you are in for a bad time.

            Now a days I respect nature but I fear it not. First on my birth on volcanic lands I now live among the dormant tombs of metamorphic stones secure in the idea that it cannot do me in…But that guy without headlights behind me while it was very much dark at night on the freeway?! That…That stuff is nuts.