Has nature ever issued a beatdown on you?

If we push a human or animal too far, we know it's duck, cover and run time. But if you tick off mother nature, God only knows what will happen to you. And the thing is, you never think she ever will take revenge until it happens, and then you know full well what you did! I have three awesome nature beatdown stories for you today, and wouldn't you know it, two of them involve me.

Recently when I went camping in the mountains, I needed an endless supply of fire wood. I bought a ton of it, but it all burned up quicker than a ten dollar bill at Starbucks. I eventually noticed all around me that there were tons of dead limbs surrounding my campsite, and I decided they would make excellent kindling. I started breaking them off the tree while acknowledging that I forgot the tree hugger's credo:ask the tree for permission first. (You can refer to me as a tree hugger or environmental wacko, either one is fine by me.)

And so I start breaking limbs off trees here and there, until I come across this really big tree limb. I start thinking to myself if I can break that dead limb off the tree, I won't have to get more fire wood for at least 17 minutes! So I tug and I tug, and the limb won't budge. I then think to myself that maybe this limb isn't so dead after all. Yet, I continue to tug. Eventually I notice that where the breaking point is, there is greenish-white wood. At this point I'm like "well, I came this far". I tug one final time and nothing. I give it up. So I start on another really dead looking branch and all of a sudden I feel this big, hard SMACK!- right in my face! After finally giving up on the one limb, it came back many seconds later and knocked me out! I instantly thought to myself, "well, I guess I deserved that".

Another quicker story involves me and my sister at Myrtle Beach about two years ago. We were sitting at the edge of the waves of the beach just talking when a bigger wave than we were used to at our spot came up and washed up all over us. My sister, being her usual off-kilter self, shook her fist at the ocean and yelled, "is that the best you can do, Sea?" Than she did it again and again. Then eventually, we all know this is coming, a huge wave came at us and knocked us over all the way up the beach! We we're kind of stunned for a few seconds after that.

The last story is about several experiences I have heard people had concerning the aurora borealis. It has been said that if you yell up at it when you see the lights in the northern sky, it will come down and get you. Of course, this is old folklore, right? Except that there is always someone yelling up at it all the time, daring the lights to come get them. It's all fun and games for awhile, then they notice that the lights are coming closer and lower to them all the time! Then they all run off like wussies with their tail between their legs.

So the moral of the story is, don't make nature mad, and don't dare it to do anything because it will *#@^ you up! If you have any stories like this, add them to the comments or e-mail them to me so I can post them! I can't wait to write more posts on this topic. And finally, to that mountain top tree and to the Atlantic ocean, I am very, very sorry!