Trust The Turtle

Back in 1996, Charlton Heston and Dirk Benedict stared in a movie called "Alaska," a story of a brother and sister's search for their father in the Alaskan wild. I have it on videotape, and enjoy watching it for the scenery.

Not to get into too many details, but the story includes an old native Alaskan who tells the young boy about the time he followed an eagle away from a forest fire. He called the eagle his "tornac," his spirit guide. During the course of the movie, the young boy's tornac turns out to be a polar bear cub.

"Trust the bear," the old Alaskan tells him.

Tuesday night, before the big storm blew through these parts, I saw a turtle on our front yard. He was really booking it west toward the lake. He was trying to get over a rut in the driveway but fell backwards on his back. In a flash, he turned himself over and took off again.

"Boy, did you see that turtle move?" I asked my wife. "He's probably late for a very important date."

Come to find out, what the turtle was running TO was not important; what he was running FROM was.

The storm blew in an hour later, and I'm sure that old turtle sensed it coming and was hunkered down somewhere, all safe and sound.

From now on, I'll trust the turtle.

But why did the storm smack us in the face? Why did it look like our house would soon fly off to Oz?

It's because several hours earlier I asked my family the question, "I wonder how our ancestors survived without electricity and air conditioning?"

And that's exactly what happened. Sixteen hours without AC or electricity.

When I was a young boy on a trip to Colorado with my parents, I asked the question, "What would happen if we had a flat tire? Would we have to take everything out of the trunk to get to the spare?"

I kid you not -- as soon as I said that, the tire blew. We stopped on the side of the highway, took everything out of the trunk, and changed the tire. To this day my father cringes whenever I say, "Hey Dad, what would happen if..."

Luckily, we fared well through this storm. Some of our friends and neighbors didn't. And what we went through was NOTHING compared to what the tornado survivors in Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Tennessee have gone through this year.

In fact, I don't know why I'm complaining about no electricity, no AC, and one downed tree that was already dead and just needed a little push to fall.

I feel like a whiner.

Let's just forget the whole thing. OK?