Bow Echo

Short Story by Jim

Bow Echo

for Stan

Hung over from to much wine and binge watching mystery science 3000, on a warm spring afternoon, you found yourself chasing thunderstorms. The forecast prompted you to leave work early, and you half ass parked the mower at the shop on east campus, ignoring the dickhead mechanic taking a smoke break. Having just finished mowing around the arboretum, you reflected on the five years spent tirelessly adding misfit trees to the border, quoting Dr. Seuss with each tree planted—a practice that had left your supervisor at wit's end.

Pulling out your earplugs, you tuned into your NOAA weather radio, preparing for the chase. Alone in time, as usual, heart pounding, heading south out of Lincoln on Highway 77 towards Fairbury and then west towards Deshler. As you drove, looming wall clouds indicating straight-line winds in the green of the emerging cornfields ahead.

Metrology school had left you with a stomach ulcer and a drinking problem. The differential equations only took away from the raw power of nature. Splitting things into tiny mathematical models proved to tear away the magic of it. You found more communion in gardening and tree planting than in storm prediction. But nothing compared with this, driving straight into a super cell on the Kansas Nebraska boarder.