When the tornado sirens were tested last week, I was reminded that a year ago, a month after moving to Lawrence, I recorded an event in my journal so I would not forget it:

The last day of February was so warm, so perfect, that I was transfixed by its promise of spring. After two weeks of snowstorms, the 70-degree weather was exhilarating.

Suddenly, about 4:30 p.m., I decided I must cook dinner early and eat outside. But in the midst of my frantic preparation, through the kitchen window I saw a beautiful light. I abandoned my cooking to go outside and check out the glow. As I stood quietly for a moment, I noticed something extraordinary. All the other life forms on my hill were in the same state of frantic preparedness that I had fallen into, with geese honking madly, frogs croaking loudly, rabbits dashing around. Birds fluttered from bush to branch, chattering. I could not determine whether the excitement was joy or fear, but I felt it in my gut as surely as did my wild neighbors.

Then I saw them. Huge, puffy, white thunderheads on the southern and eastern horizons, growing larger and larger. Outlined against the bare branches of winter trees, the thunderheads were magnificent. Then as the sun lowered into the west, the thunderheads turned brilliant pink. Soon, lightning began erratically dancing on the southern and eastern horizons, accompanied by a low, growling rumble that reminded me of the fighter jets that took to the skies around Washington, D.C., after 9/11.

The rumble got louder. The flashes became more frequent. I stood outside watching until my eyeballs ached. Through it all, the frog chorus intensified, as if they were bragging to creation that the impending storm would not affect them, safe at the surface of the pond. As it grew dark, the thunder crescendo was joined by animal wailing. Coyotes, then dogs joined in. Now, clearly, the animal mood was fear, not joy.

I believe the physical reality of your world is imprinted on you when you are a child, and you need to be out in it. Otherwise, you are just a person in a house watching “American Idol” on TV, enduring noisy Head-On commercials. Without being in place, where you belong, you are at the mercy of a culture trying to make you forget. In some primal way, we need to be out in our world smelling soil, feeling wind in our faces, standing under swaying trees, participating in creation.

The time came when I needed to take shelter, as large raindrops began pelting violently and thunder crashes grew closer. Safe inside, I viewed the storm through the windows, ready to descend into the cellar – where I had already carried down bottled water, a radio and candles, just in case the storm went beyond bluster.

Then I sat down in front of the TV to watch the storm’s progress on radar. While I was gone on the East Coast for 35 years, tornado reporting in this part of the world has become a sophisticated science. Very different from my youth in Kansas when our only warning came from a father who understood the power of green in clouds.

I recall being under my parents’ iron bed at age 5 in our dugout home as a tornado roared through our farm. We all survived. The barn and chicken shed did not. Afterward, chicken feathers fluttered in the air.

The weather service was telling us that it would be a long, noisy, violent night. I thought I must try to stay awake on the couch a few steps from the cellar door until they cancel the tornado alert. But I couldn’t. My eyes were closing despite the blinding flashes and crashing thunder. By morning, they said a cold front would have moved in and we would awaken to snow falling.

I awoke upstairs in my bed – at some point, I must have climbed the stairs and stolen into bed. I turned on the morning news and discovered that the terrible beauty of the storm took a life in a county to our south.

It was cold and gray that morning. Fog and snow competed to dim the light. Large snowflakes were falling but melting into ground puddles. I brewed a pot of coffee. The wind was howling around the corners of the house.

It’s good to be back in Kansas.