And just like that, the tropical Atlantic came alive. After an August with minimal swell and no hurricanes, two named storms popped up, one as we went to press Wednesday threatening to make a first landfall in already battered Puerto Rico and projected to arrive as Hurricane Dorian in northern Florida on Monday. At the same time, but less of a threat to shore, another storm developed off the Carolina coast but was to move away into the open ocean by the end of the week.
A state crew arrived on Tuesday to take down a large dead tree on Main Street across from our office. The tree’s lease in this world had expired the summer before, and, as its neighboring trees leafed this spring, stayed bare. A large branch fell at the Pondview Lane corner just days ago, prompting the workers with a bucket truck and chain saws to arrive.
Looking up in the village and the woods, it is clear that it has been a long time since the buzz saw of a late-summer storm did nature’s weeding among the weak and dying trees. It has been about 80 years since Main Street had an ample pruning like this and the trees, now with full and untamed boughs, wag their branches as if to say come and get me. But no one knows, not even they, if this will be the year.