PROLOGUE Storm I return from a road trip, just in time for the windstorms. It happens every spring: The cold and warm air currents of this tilting planet clash over the ocean and send furious gusts inland, marking the shift in season with storms punctuated by random power outages and the occasional afternoon of torrential rain. Inside the house, my suitcase lies abandoned on the living room floor, stuffed with dusty clothes and a dog-eared journal of scribbled, dozy road dreams. The indoor pets sniff at it, trying to decipher the strange smells and the stories behind them. I''ll unpack it all later. For now, I have more important things to do: a covered porch to stand on, a storm to watch. How to Watch a Storm Face into the wind with your glasses on. If you turn your head sideways, the wind will blow pine needles and dirt into your eyes.

If you put your back to it, your hair will lash your face, and you will not see any falling tree or spinning branch as it plummets toward you. Face into the wind; it is safest. Remember your childhood, storms on the lake. Your mother would wake you at odd hours, urging you to "put your coat and boots on, quickly, you need to come see." The waves smashing into the shore. She''d warn you to stand on the open rocks, away from the trees. "The falling branches are dangerous," she''d say. Lightning may strike.

Stand in the open, on the bare rocks, and watch the water rage. There are no rocks here, no open shoreline, just a covered porch and trees too far away to harm you. But the dry pine needles spin like sharp snowflakes, and the branches crack and rattle like ambushing soldiers. The wind comes from the southeast, but if it were to shift or ricochet off the mountains and come back from behind you, there are trees on the other side of the house, close enough and tall enough to be fatal. Stand with your face in the wind and your ears cocked like a rabbit''s, listening, always listening, for the crack and creak and rattle of falling trees. Do not mistake the occasional gunshot sounds for danger. They are distant electricity. They are transformers rupturing, dropping neighborhoods into cold and darkness.

They are power lines snapping, flailing like enraged octopuses that charge the contacted ground into electrified danger. But they are not on your street. You are safe, relatively, to stand on the porch and watch the world explode. *** The windstorms seem more violent now than in previous years--but is that due to changes in global weather patterns, or is this little acreage just more exposed and vulnerable since the neighbors cut down all their sturdy pine trees and the municipality bulldozed the ninety-acre forest at the back of the property? Until recent years, there were more trees, the view across the neighboring properties was short and blocked, and behind us was a great forest. Now, much of the wilderness has been cleared away in early preparation for the demolition and removal of all that is here. The city an hour away is growing, its limbs of development stretching to land where I stand. Now, the lawns are riddled with thick stumps, the line of sight stretches several hundred yards, and only a thin belt of untouched, wild trees frames the back end of this row of houses. A single, massive, older-growth ponderosa pine stretches high above its arboreal companions, ancient and dry, the proud, old monarch of a shrinking kingdom.

Loose leaves press into piles against the garage, the workshop, the beehives. The gate to the dog''s yard rattles and bangs a metallic staccato. The tire swing, a worn souvenir of long-grown children, twists and spins. Beneath the clack of swaying tree trunks banging against each other, the rattle of broken, fallen branches and random objects blowing about, and the monstrous howl of wind, the world is surprisingly uninhabited, quiet. The wild cottontail rabbits that graze on our lawn are absent, hiding under porches and bushes, waiting for the chaos to pass. The predatory wild animals are also out of sight: The coyotes have no prey to chase, and the hawks and eagles are unwilling to try to battle the wind with their wings. Our bird feeders spin and flip and crash to the ground, spilling their seeds across the lawn, their usual menagerie of patrons--finches, robins, chickadees, assorted boring brown birds--huddling somewhere in the trees instead of filling the air with their wings and a symphony of assorted songs. Even the squirrels and crows do not come in for their daily feast of peanuts and food scraps.

One would think that at least the frogs would be extra loud in their anticipation of rain and puddles and post-storm bugs: but no, they, too, are silent, self-protectively hiding, unaware of the future. My little quails are huddled at the back of their pen, bright eyes wide, secure and safe against the blast of prickly pine needles but nevertheless alarmed by the noise and upheaval. Today, at least, they will not be bothered by hungry rats tunneling under their home or trying to chew through the pen''s wired walls. Our honey bees are fine, snuggled into their sturdy hives waiting for calm and sunshine. The wind here, though dramatic, is not strong enough to knock their multi-hundred-pound homes over. If we lived in another region, I''d have to venture beyond the safety of the porch and frantically ratchet the hives down with thick vinyl straps, pile cement bricks on their roofs, and hope for the best. Inside the house, the pets abandon their perusal of my travel luggage, distracted by the flickering lights and external cacophony. The dog paces the hallway, seeking refuge from the howl of the wind in the eaves and, finding none, curls up in his soft bed with his nose on his paws.

The cat sits in the window watching unfamiliar objects blow by, alternately staring silently and loudly inventing new vowels. Down the road, one of the neighbors has foolishly taken to flying a kite, forgetting that the momentary absence of rain does not mean the absence of possible lightning strikes. I squint at our apple trees, trying to see if they have begun to sprout blossoms. Heavy wind during a bloom can make for a sad harvest: torn of their soft petals, tiny flowers lose their ability to attract the pollinators that will fertilize them and initiate the process of forming fruit. A deep crack thuds into my ears, and I glance back up to the fringe of swaying forest. The crown of the tall monarch tree has broken, sheared off in the fierce wind. The massive treetop falls, crashing across the neighbor''s workshop and garden. The neighbor reels in his frantically twisting kite and runs into his house.