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Stranded on Nantucket - Day One

© Fred Durand

I wasn't quite awake yet, but somehow I knew it was morning. Sensing my wife in bed next to me and hearing the sounds of our kids somewhere in the house, I knew everything was okay. But what was that noise? Something brushing against the outside of the house. And a low dull roar that came and went, louder then softer. Opened one eye, then the other - not our bedroom. Oh yeah, we're on vacation celebrating our sixteenth wedding anniversary in Nantucket. We had rented a beautiful house on a quiet dead end street in Tom Nevers. It had been a wonderful long weekend in mid-October and we were leaving today with reservations on the 12:00 p.m. ferry.

But what was that noise? Judging from the sounds emitted by our two young daughters, they either didn't hear it or weren't concerned. What I really wanted to do was forget the noise and fall back to sleep. Not a chance. I pulled on some sweats and dragged myself upstairs. We were staying in an "upside down" house, with bedrooms on the first floor and living areas and kitchen on the second floor. This is typical in the Tom Nevers area, it allows you to take better advantage of the breathtaking views. Miles of rolling moors down to the distant ocean.

I glanced out the kitchen window. It was windy - really windy. The scrub oaks and pines on the moors aren't more than 3 or 4 feet tall, but they were blowing around crazily. Some of the wind gusts slanted the dwarf trees at odd angles, then just as quickly they snapped upright again. I looked down and noticed the foundation shrubs, their branches tossed around by the wind, brushing against the house. That was the noise I had heard from the bedroom. I focused on the ocean. Although it was more than a mile away, it somehow looked different. Lots of churning white and gray. Menacing. Not a place I'd like to be in a small fishing boat, I thought, or any boat for that matter. It was always breezy in Nantucket and often windy, but not like this.

"Good morning", called my wife from the top of the stairs. "Good morning to you", I replied. "Check out the window". After twenty minutes of updates and commercials from the Weather Channel, we learned that Hurricane Irene was churning up the East Coast. With sustained winds of 95 mph, it was forecast to pass approximately 175 miles southeast of Nantucket on its way out to sea. Not a big deal, I figured, we had about 3 hours to pack and make our way down to the ferry terminal. Why hadn't we known about this hurricane beforehand, I wondered. They don't just appear out of nowhere. Then I realized we hadn't read a newspaper, powered up a computer, or paid attention to the news or weather for the past 3 days.