Hurricane Yogi Experience

Yoga poses and hurricane evacuations don't normally share the same written page.

We've all seen lots of surreal images in the wake of the recent Gulf hurricanes. Mine is the "lucky, spoiled yuppie" version of that event.

When Rita threatened Houston I headed for the Texas hill country with my sweetheart , her daughter, and cat . Our whole trip was surreal, and at times even guilt-inducing. We thought we were running for our lives at about 3:00 AM on Thursday, Sept 29th, as forecasters were predicting a direct hit on Houston. Millions of others listened to their predictions and were fleeing with us, and after many hours on the road we arrived in Austin.

By the time we arrived in Austin, the storm had begun its shift to the East. After watching too many hours of TV storm coverage, we headed to my nearby property in Wimberley and took a dip in the waters of the Blanco River. I'm not sure whose idea it was to begin doing yoga poses. But suddenly, the three of us were doing just that, and taking turns photographing each other just to prove that we actually did it. Several families swimming nearby stared at us. No wonder. So, that's how the photo above came to be. (There are better photos of my travelling companions doing their yoga poses than this one of me, but publishing them here could create a hurricane of a different type.) So there we were, enjoying this beautiful, clean, refreshing water, just as Rita's foul waters were about to but a big ding in the lives of our brothers to the East. Again.

Traveling for hours in a small car with lots of stuff, your girlfriend, her daughter, and cat may not sound like a recipe for fun. But a funny thing happened on the way to Austin. Our despair with the traffic fiasco turned to humor sometime before sunrise as we realized just how lucky we were. The radio gave us frequent updates on those who weren't so lucky, and the horrors of Katrina were still fresh in our minds. Maybe it was sleep deprivation that increased our silliness factor as we jammed to music, stuck our feet out of the open windows, joked about our poor traumatized cat, and checked out every other vehicle on the road for something to point at. Funny bumper stickers, dogs sitting in their driver's laps, and treasures people were hauling away to safety in their pickup beds. Treasures like weightlifting machines, coffee makers, and some really stunning green velvet couches. That trip brought us closer together, this little sort-of-family of ours. Although so many people have suffered great losses from the storms and need our love & support, I hope that many more had experiences like mine. I hope that others created memories that will last a lifetime not from trauma, but because of the special appreciation for life they generated.

Those kind of experiences don't make the headlines, but this one reminded me that we all need each other, and that the most important things in life are right under our noses. Thanks Rita, I needed that.