We take for granted the benefit nature bestows on us. Six months after a tornado hit Moscow, Ohio, one woman remembers:

She “used to be able to walk from her home for five blocks down toward the river and be under trees nearly the whole time. Not anymore… now she knows why she has always loved Moscow’s trees … There is the shade, of course. But now she says the wind feels different. It is harder when it sweeps up from the river. And she can hear the barges that carry coal to the William H. Zimmer Power Station on the north edge of town.”*

So here’s to greater appreciation of those everyday things, like the trees we take for granted or get annoyed at when they shed leaves or nuts: the “things” we will truly miss when they are gone.

*The Enquirer, Sunday, Sept. 2, 2012 p. B6.