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Take off your jeans!" He was already removing his long buckskin loin cloth. With gestures he made me understand what he was doing. I started pulling off my blue jeans in a mad panic as the twisters built in intensity and slowly began to move towards us. He tied his buckskin wrap to one of my jean's legs, and then wrapped the whole apparatus around the massive cedar. He tied the other end together, completing the loop, and we both crawled inside the makeshift safety belt, clasping our hands together around the circumference of the tree.


Locked in this embrace, I lay my face against the body of the tree. The ropy bark flayed my cheeks as it flapped in the screaming wind. I could see the twin tornadoes moving slowly towards us. The tempest increased in occasionally from the ground and slamming me back down. As the massive funnels drove down upon us, I felt myself lifted into the air, my legs pulled out from under me and out into the crazed cyclone.


I wrapped my arms around the safety belt and held onto Angel as the wind began to swing us round and round the great tree like junebugs on a string. My arms cried out in agony with the pain of holding on. I sobbed and olus. Finally, after every ounce of resistance was used up, I lost all hope and surrendered. I no longer cared to save my self and let go of Angel's hands, allowing the wind to carry me aloft like a gull tumbling on a hurricane.

I sang though the currents of the atmosphere, naked and vulnerable, spinning slowly like a top just beginning to wobble, listing first this way, then that, like a small craft in heavy seas. It felt like I was flying, and when I wasn't immediately dashed on the rocks, I began to enjoy it. I even began to control my body on the currents, picking updrafts and crying out in excitement as I dove through the cold thermals only to fall into a cushion of warm air and rise once again.