Title
Ginger’s Story
Name
Ginger Taylor
Place
Brooklyn, New York 11217
How are you sensing climate change?
I felt climate change when Hurricane Sandy stormed through my city in 2012. It was night, raining hard, we had no power, and I could not see very well out of my window (which I wasn’t supposed to go near anyway). But I could hear it. I heard the wind testing our old windows, rain beating down on the hoods of cars, my mother’s warning voice halfway through the night, telling a neighbor to get back inside, get back. Of all these sounds, the clearest was the snap of a large gingko tree sailing into the front of our house. I don’t remember any broken glass or screaming, just the snap of wood finally giving up.
How do these changes make you feel?
Hearing a tree fall on my house fired many emotions at once: confusion, panic, helplessness– but perhaps also excitement, an innocent delight in what I could not immediately understand. The next morning was much harder, with the uniformed adults coming around with sirens and devices, taping off sections of our block where more trees had smashed onto cars and through kitchen windows. Having seen the damage with my own eyes, it’s hard to account for the part of me that had been thrilled by the events of that evening. But that was how it felt: terrifying with a bit of excitement.
Brooklyn, New York 11217
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