I have experienced a couple of earthquakes in my life. Most of them were so tiny I didn’t notice, but a big one happened in Scotts Mills, about 15 miles from the home in 1993. The quake was 5.6 on the richter scale, and did some damage around the town, although little if any that I could see in the house.
I left the house when it started, in my bathrobe. At just before 6:00 it was just getting light in March and cool outside, but I was alone. I stood there, as the rumbling stopped and the movement died down staring at the ground.
What was once so solid and trustworthy, wasn’t any more. All the terms you use to describe something absolute and reliable: rock solid, rock bottom, foundation, all of them presume the place you can go for safe stability is the earth its self. Now it was moving around, it couldn’t be trusted. Suddenly the world felt… untrustworthy. I was filled with a queasy sense of unease and uncertainty. There’s simply nowhere else to go when you can’t trust the solidity of the planet beneath your feet.
Christopher Taylor, “ROCK SOLID NO MORE”, Word Around the Net, 2016-06-13.
February 19, 2018
QotD: Experiencing an earthquake for the first time
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