The Milkweed Tornado

The Milkweed Tornado

Henry's father looked down at his young son and asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.

Henry answered in his little boy milkweed voice full of hope, pride and enthusiasm. "I want to be a really big milkweed just like you Dad, as big as a tree! And I want to grow really big seed pods and pop them open in the fall and have them all fly up to the heavens and swirl around and land in every corner of the earth!!"  Henry's voice grew louder and prouder and more enthusiastic as he spoke.

Henry's father looked down at his son and smiled. There was a time when he too had hopes and dreams like that. Sometimes in the fall he could even recall the exhilaration of his own youth as he let fly with his own explosive bursts of seeds.

"Anything else Henry?",  his father asked.  Henry was all bright eyed now as he stared up into the blue Vermont summer sky. "Yes, Dad", Henry replied. "I want my seeds to sweep up and soar so high and be so many that they glimmer and glow and smell so sweet that people know just how fine and sweet and good we milkweed are and name their children after us." You could just about see Henry shining as he spoke and stared up at the blue sky through some low hanging sugar maple branches. Certainly the trees heard Henry's answer to his father. They swayed in approval.

It was October third of that same year and a low pressure system had moved across the country and made its way over northern Vermont. The temperatures and winds were perfect for seed flight. Thousands and thousands of milkweed plants, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands, let fly simultaneously with their precious flying seeds. Up and out and up and swirling with the new winds. Perhaps because of the way they absorbed heat or added their momentum to the swirling winds, for whatever reason,  a powerful maelstrom built and swirled and rose and rose higher and highter, Later, the meteorologists would call it an anomaly caused by weather coincidences. The fact remains that Henry and his family and all the rest of the plants and trees and even the birds and chipmunks all knew the real reason that the Milkweed Tornado occurred. Up it flew and swirled, all silvery shining and sweet and beautiful. Silvery white it was and many people who saw it were sure it was a sign and renewed their faith. It seemed to echo the goodness and power of nature and the seasons of growing. Certainly there was some fine spiritual power behind it all as it flew round the whole earth dropping these little milkweed seeds.