Painting in a Hurricane?

The sun is shining now in Annapolis, but Irene is coming, so today will be spent wrapping up the preparations we have been making all week. The bicycles and balcony furniture have been brought inside, the pantry is stocked, bottled water is chilling, flashlights are at the ready and my Kindle, netbook, and smartphone are charged. Today I'll be baking cookies instead of painting. It feels a bit surreal, as though I am getting ready for Christmas instead of a disaster. (Except, of course, that it is 80 degrees outside and the bikes are in the living room). You know that feeling of freedom you get when you finish cooking and cleaning for one big event that is dominating your schedule, and there is nothing left to do but wait? Or you are snowed in for a day or two? When there is nothing more that needs to be or even can be done, that is when my creative energy really flows. But it is quite a different thing to sit and paint by a window while snow quietly falls, than when 60 mph+ winds are shredding the trees. I don't know that I can detach myself from reality quite that much. I grew up in the midwest and have a morbid fascination of storms, and can never pull away from a good lightning show or force myself to go to the basement if there is a chance to see a funnel cloud. 


My main concern is for my newly adopted but already beloved city. When you paint something, you spend a great deal of time with it and begin to know it intimately. Time and understanding build attachment. Will the sailboats I have painted ride out the storm undamaged? Will our favorite waterfront shops and restaurants escape storm surge? This is not just another pretty place to us but represents relationships we have begun to build here and people we care about. 


I wonder too what the ponies on Assateague will do. In several visits to the island, we have come to recognize some of the ponies. Will we find again in the fall the same ponies I painted in the summer?