From early on, Hurricane Ian seemed to be headed for Florida’s west coast. Initially, parts of the east coast were inside the cone, but as the storm progressed, the track moved to the west and South Florida was in the clear. As Ian started closing in on the west coast and the National Hurricane Center began issuing more frequent positions, I realized I might have the opportunity to watch a hurricane unfold on live TV.
Until today, my experience of hurricanes has come from being hit by them or from writing about them in fiction. But on September 28, I watched MSNBC and NBC News for most of the day. That ease is due to more advanced technology but also, I think, to greater awareness about climate change. The need to watch this was that our daughter is in Orlando.
My binge of Ian taught me a couple of things. I found a synchronicity – which I wrote about – and also realized just how greatly climate change has impacted hurricanes now as opposed to those in, say, the Sixties. The first hurricane I experienced was in 1964, a year after my parents had left Venezuela and moved to Florida. Hurricane Cleo. I was spending the weekend in Coral Gables, with a friend from Venezuela, and the only thing I recall is that Judy’s parents put up hurricane shutters.
Over the years, of course, I’ve been through many more hurricanes, have used them in my novels, have studied them, been awed and humbled by then. And thanks to climate change, they have grown in intensity, unpredictability, and devastation. The oceans are warmer, scalding in some areas. The ocean currents wobble and shift and so do the upper winds.
For much of this hurricane season, it’s been quiet. This August, in fact, a month that usually features hurricanes, had none. That has happened only twice before. There were no tropical storms or hurricanes in the month of August in 1961 and 1997. These kind of inconsistencies bother me.
The media started talking about that, about what an unusual hurricane season it had been after so many dire predictions. So much attention was focused on the absence of hurricanes in August that September made up for it.
In August 2019, as Hurricane Dorian headed for Florida, a group of 13 of us meditated with the Crystal Skull that Bill Homan had brought to our home. The meditation’s focus was to push Dorian away form Florida. At the time, it was stalled and predicted to slam into Florida. That night, we meditated as a group, and then each one of us had the opportunity to meditate directly with the Mitchell-Hedges skull.
The next day, Dorian was on the move again, but away from South Florida. In retrospect, we realized we should have meditated on Dorian dying somewhere in the North Atlantic. Instead, it crashed into the Abacos in the Bahamas. But one of my suspicions was confirmed: these hurricanes possess some element of consciousness.
Then again, doesn’t most of nature? So why not hurricanes? Earthquakes? Flooding? Volcanic eruptions? The state of my plants seems to reflect my mood at times. Our pets pick up on our moods. Our consciousness helps create what we experience. Everything is entangled. What impacts one, impacts all.
