As far-away Hurricane Sally threw big waves against the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain Tuesday evening, a woman sat on the seawall, getting pummeled.
Beverage in hand, she had staked out a position on the low retaining wall surrounding one of the palm trees intermittently spiked into the cement, just steps from the churning water.
I didn’t get close enough to ask her name, as I didn’t want to get soaked. She had no such misgivings.
Wave after wave broke over her head as she sat on the planter, laughing defiantly. One set of big breakers hit in such quick succession that she had to turn away to catch her breath.
But she held her ground.
“Best day ever!” she shouted.
Translation: Go ahead, Sally. Throw whatever you’ve got at me. I can take it. In fact, I'll find a way to enjoy it.
Sure, sitting so close to the edge was risky. Had she lost her balance and tumbled down the seawall steps, she might not have been able to climb out of the angry water.
Kids play in water from Lake Pontchartrain, churned up by north winds from distant Hurricane Sally, on Lakeshore Drive near Canal Boulevard in New Orleans on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2020.
But doesn’t just about every activity seem at least a little bit risky in 2020?
Going to the grocery.
Going to a restaurant.
Going to an office.
Going to California, or Oregon, or Washington.
Whether from the coronavirus pandemic, or wildfires, or hurricanes, or some combination thereof, it all comes with some element of danger. The constant drumbeat of disaster this year has taken a toll mentally if not physically.
Which was why the lady at the lake’s attitude was so refreshing. There she was, up on the ramparts, taking whatever Sally dished out and literally laughing in the storm’s face.
A hurricane scare two weeks after the last hurricane scare? No problem — let’s go get splashed!
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All that wave action on Lake Pontchartrain this week was a reminder that this is not technically a lake at all, but an estuary connected to the Gulf of Mexico via the Rigolets. It is susceptible to tidal forces.
With the brisk north winds barreling in from Sally more than 100 miles away, Mother Nature put on a spectacular display of power in Lake Pontchartrain.
As with Hurricane Laura, the full force of Sally’s power was not brought to bear on New Orleans.
But every hurricane ends up somewhere. Thousands of evacuees from southwest Louisiana, rendered homeless by Laura, are still in New Orleans. And early Wednesday, Sally ground into Gulf Shores, Alabama, pounding a picturesque stretch of the Gulf Coast with wind, rain and waves. Our good fortune is someone else’s misfortune.
For most New Orleanians, Sally ended up being little more than a stressful novelty. Thus, dozens of locals assembled along the lakefront Tuesday evening at the intersection of Canal Boulevard and Lakeshore Drive, taking in the spectacle and sharing in our community’s collective relief. Very few in attendance wore face masks, relying on the stiff gusts blowing off the lake to whisk away and disperse any airborne virus.
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The stretch of Lakeshore Drive looked like a river, complete with a current running west to east and whitecaps cutting perpendicularly across it. Kids frolicked in the flooded street and temporary tidal pools, dodging floating balls of fire ants and other hazards.
It is a longstanding local tradition. Meteorologist Margaret Orr, responding on Twitter to photographs of the scene, recalled how, as a child, she too had played along hurricane-flooded Lakeshore Drive.
Tuesday’s wave action also functioned as a real-world, home-schooling lesson about the power of hurricanes, the interaction of wind and water, and the necessity of functioning levees. Water pooled up against the earthen levees protecting the Lakeshore and Lake Vista neighborhoods, but got nowhere near the top. Had Sally taken its previously projected path closer to New Orleans, those levees would have been tested.
This time, happily, they weren’t.
And as that laughing lady at the lake demonstrated, in this difficult year, that’s something to celebrate.
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