The Storm
by ErikL · 18 June 2026 · Travel & Nature
An autumn storm brings down a third of Erik's forest section. He walks the damage alone. A birch that held everything gives him no explanation. Three words with his wife that evening.
We had the storm on a Thursday in October. I know it was Thursday because I had driven into Mora that morning for supplies and was back by noon, and the sky was already doing what it does before something serious — not dramatic, just wrong somehow, the light too flat, the birds quiet in a way that isn't peaceful.
By morning a third of the eastern section was down. I walked it alone, which is how I prefer to assess damage, without other voices in it. The trees that had fallen were mostly spruce, which is what you expect — shallow roots, susceptible to windthrow in saturated ground. Some of them had been dead already, though you don't always see that until they're horizontal. The ones that surprised me were the ones still standing. A birch at the edge of the section, maybe sixty years old, not particularly large, and it had held everything around it. I don't know why that one and not the others. The forest doesn't explain itself.
My wife asked how bad it was when I came home. I said bad enough. She didn't ask further. She's been with me long enough to know what that means.
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