If a picture paints a thousand words...

There is no photograph to post. There won't be. There isn't a photograph to describe what I've just experienced this last half hour. Instead I'll make my grandest attempt to depict it in a thousand words.

Have you ever experienced or been through a hurricane? I have. I lived in Florida. The first time I ever had a glimpse of the ocean was immediately after a tropical storm working its way beyond Ft. Lauderdale. The waves were still at least 5 feet high and the salt air engulfed my senses with a smell that was beyond belief. By good fortune I spent the night at a brand new hotel next to an exquisite marina and woke up at sunrise the next day.

I walked to the ocean as rapidly as I could upon awakening and ventured to the same spot I claimed as my own the prior evening and all I saw was a sea of glass. Completely calm. Only the hint of waves. I was overwhelmed by the night and day contrast. But the smell. That salt air smell was still there. It's a smell I'll never forget, and it is the smallest portion of why I remembered this this most beautiful evening.

A hurricane can be painful, devastating, but tonight, to me, Ike is beautiful! I guess you have to have lived near the ocean to really appreciate it. I have, but haven't for the last 12 years. I haven't experienced the pleasure of salt air or the feel of sand under my toes and kicking up sand crabs in at least that long. But I still remember it. I'll never forget it. I want to experience it again.

Tonight is the closest I've come in ten years or more. And here I am in my little "nest" just slightly north of Pittsburgh ( Go Steelers -- sorry couldn't resist). Outside my patio are two 50-plus-year-old pine trees that surround my 16 stairs that descend to an unkept street. Very ugly on a bad day, but when the time is right I can lie back in my patio chair, and if the moon is full and I catch the moment, the moon is at the apex of the pines as I relax and look up from my chair.

Tonight the view was so much better. Tonight I saw a hurricane. Well, I saw Ike...the remnants. The clouds started as layers that I recognized as the outskirts of the storm. Gradually the wind has picked up, and with each increase in the balmy breeze I smell the smell I've so missed for years. That long lost smell of the sea. I know, it sounds strange. I'm half a continent away from where Ike made landfall. What drugs am I on that I can smell salt air this far inland? But I'm telling you I can. I do. And I am once again in love with the sea.

Are you in love with something? Something/someone that you'll never forget? This is what I am in love with. This moment. This smell. This feeling. This picture that I can't take to show you. And this picture that I can only describe in words. I don't know if I've made a thousand words. Honestly I don't care. I only hope that I've painted the picture as vividly as I see it in real life.

Enjoy.

Very well described and i am imagining it right now in my head. I think it's very bizarre that you experienced this mainly because i always thought Pittsburgh was towards the north of America whereas Ike hit the south a few days ago. My brother has a "Scottish Festival" this weekend in Tulsa, OK and he's having problems because of the weather, maybe he can smell the smell you are talking about.

Unfortunately, and i think this is kinda sad, what you appreciate so much is something i can't appreciate due to how common the above is to me. The only thing about it is i don't often see Hurricanes, infact the closes to a hurricane i've experienced was the Catagory 3 type storm weather we had off the west coast of Scotland 3-4 years ago. The wind was so powerful that i didn't dare breath in to smell the smell purely through fear of suffocating .

I have a story, but i will leave it until yours receives the deserved comments it requires from other users. It sounded like a great moment Mark, thanks for sharing it!

Wow. Powerful emotions, powerful words, ATNO. It must feel orgasmic experiencing that ... I feel kinda the same today, except a lot less intense, but it's good again to be outside with a warm breeze rubbing my skin, not at all like the biting cold of winter. Storms and hurricanes and cycones are much more intense though - there's a kind of energy in the atmostphere that takes a hold of you ... and you get lost in it, and you're glad that you are. I can't wait for the summer storms

You're 415 words short pal.

Nice though.

When I wrote this last night, I was just experiencing the fringe. About a half hour later the winds really picked up and started bring down trees and branches and one took down a power line just down the road and I lost power right at the start of the Steelers game. *pout*. Wind gusts were clocked as high as 67mph. With no power there was nothing to do except grill some chicken wings outside *yumm* and enjoy the remnants of the storm.

I thought Hurricane Ike died off when it was in Texas. I really didn't think it would ever reach your part of the US.

It reached Chicago, Kansas. (It was very weak there... doubt there was anything) but it was in my Newspaper

To think the hurricane season is just beginning. Kinda worrying.

Here are a few pics of the sky just at sunset. Still can't really depict what I was experiencing but it helps.

I have. I lived in Columbia when Hugo came through. It was still a cat-1 when the eye went over us, so we got the full effect. I loved your description, but my one and only experience with a hurricane was completely the opposite.

The electricity was off for 7 days all of which were hot and sunny and since the storm dumped so much water on us, it was nice and muggy the whole time too. I spent the week helping friends clear away trees and debris. I've never taken so many showers in so many different places in my life.