Nature Has No Agenda

This morning, I sat in my well-worn leather recliner, a calico cat stretched comfortably across my left arm while my right hand filled another page of my journal. It is part of my morning ritual whenever I am not on the road.

Eventually, I came to a stopping point. The pages of my journal remained open, but my pen rested quietly across them. I sat for a few moments longer, looking out the window. The sun had risen, and patches of blue sky had begun to appear through the dense green canopy of the trees.

My first reaction, almost instinctive, was relief. The violent storms and heavy rains that had swept through the night had either moved on or exhausted themselves somewhere beyond the horizon.

Then my thoughts drifted to another morning several years ago.

I had driven to Florida's Gulf Coast to witness Hurricane Michael firsthand—one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to strike the United States. I wanted to see, firsthand, what a hurricane of that magnitude was truly like.

As I watched the storm unfold, I understood why so many who lived in its path described it as violent. The winds were relentless, the rain blinding, and the sheer power of the storm inspired both fear and awe.

Yet the greatest revelation came not during the hurricane itself, but the following morning.

I had spent the night in Fairhope, Alabama, many miles away from where the hurricane made landfall. As I walked the short distance from my hotel room to the breakfast area, I stopped almost involuntarily.

The sky was an impossibly deep blue. A warm, gentle breeze drifted steadily through the air. Everything felt peaceful.

Less than twenty-four hours earlier, I had been sitting in my Ford Expedition fewer than two hundred miles away, witnessing Hurricane Michael's fury. Now the air was calm, the sky inviting, and the world seemed almost untouched.

It was as though nothing had happened.

Later that morning, I drove toward the areas where the storm had passed. Even there, the skies remained brilliantly clear. As I continued west toward Pensacola, I passed dozens of surfers taking advantage of the larger waves the storm had left behind. Once again, beneath cloudless skies, life was already moving forward.

It was then that I realized something I have never forgotten.

Nature has no agenda.

The hurricane was not angry. It was not seeking revenge. It was not punishing anyone or intentionally destroying anything. It was simply responding to changes within the natural world, rebalancing itself according to forces far older than humanity. It just happened that people and their homes lay in its path.

For much of human history, storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, and floods were believed to be the wrath of angry gods. People offered sacrifices in hopes of calming divine tempers and preventing another catastrophe.

Standing in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, I saw something entirely different.

Nature was not lashing out.

It was simply being nature.

The trees did not resent the wind. The birds did not curse the rain. The shoreline did not seek revenge against the sea. Everything simply adapted and continued.

Perhaps that is where we differ.

We often assign intention where none exists. We interpret hardship as hostility. We search for someone—or something—to blame. But nature offers another perspective. It reminds us that not every destructive force is driven by malice. Sometimes the world is simply responding to circumstances beyond our control.

This morning, as I sat once again in my recliner, the blue sky returned after another night of storms. It looked much the same as it did that morning in Alabama.

And once again, I was reminded that while nature eventually returns to balance, we humans often carry yesterday's storms far longer than we need to.

The Names We Give Our Hopes

August 4, 2019

For decades I have been fascinated by the names of small towns scattered across America—places whose names seem less like locations and more like aspirations.

This morning, as I drove from Pittsburgh back to Grafton, West Virginia, I left the Interstate in search of one of them: Prosperity. Like so many towns across America, its name seemed less a description than a declaration of hope by those who first settled there.

While searching for Prosperity, I first came upon the town of Amity.

Amity—a word meaning friendship, harmony, and goodwill.

Only one road passes through Amity. Two churches face one another across Highway 19—a Methodist church built in 1867 and a Presbyterian church completed seven years later.

Continuing on, I finally arrived in Prosperity—named after “the optimism of its settlers.” The town was much like Amity, although it appeared to be in a somewhat better state of upkeep. Houses lined both sides of the road, some with small front yards. The town sits at the “Y” where Highways 18 and 221 meet.

Having left Prosperity behind, I made a few wrong turns and eventually found myself, as best I can determine, near the town of Good Intent. Seven houses, a Presbyterian church, and a weathered barn stood along West Union Trace. The barn appeared to have witnessed countless seasons come and go.

As though framed within the doorway like a photograph hanging on a wall, a reddish-brown horse stood facing left. It was the only sign of life within the town.

Each time I drove through—which was three times, nearly back to back—there was not a person, dog, or cat in sight. It was as if all life had vanished, or had become quietly sequestered within the walls of the houses scattered across the surrounding hills.

With each of these three towns, I wondered if their namesakes ever became reality.

Perhaps the people who founded these towns understood something we often forget—that communities begin not with certainty, but with hope. Their names were not simply descriptions of what existed; they were declarations of what they believed might one day become possible.

As I continue to reflect on this, I am overcome by a sense of the hope that must have filled these early settlers as they established these places. There was a time when these towns existed only as an idea—when the landscape before them was unsettled, and people were stepping into uncertainty in search of a new beginning.

They were not simply building homes and streets. They were creating a future they could not yet see.