When it really blows

Some people may wonder why anyone would ever live along a coast. Those are probably people who don't appreciate the natural beauty of the ocean, the sweeping sand of the beaches, the cleansing salt air, the sunrises or sunsets that cannot be replicated anywhere else. My flirtations with the shoreline have always been temporary, from weeklong visits to the Texas gulf coast, to monthlong visits to my grandparents' home in Virginia on a barrier island in the Atlantic. I remain in love with the coast, yet it's not where I'm meant to live for a few reasons – the most easily explainable being that I'm too practical. I know the damage that can be done by the very waters I love.

But I understand and support its allure. Most people blessed enough to be there aren't making their livings off the sea, but it draws us there just the same. And the majority of time, there are no threats of flooding or hurricanes. Likewise, people wonder why anyone lives in California with the underlying threat of "the big one" that will someday split the earth beneath. But to visit California is to also love many aspects of it, and in San Francisco in particular, the lovely climate and vibrancy fostered by its inhabitants is contagious.

Where I live, it's pretty drab. The land is flat, the climate resorts to a semi-arid desert in the summertime, and we don't have four distinct seasons because the cooling months fly by quickly. Really, the climate is geared for business. There are literally dozens of neighborhoods being planted nearby that will contain thousands of homes – supersuburbs that bring with them boring strip shopping centers (all with nail salons, pizza places, donut shops), hulking Wal-Marts and ubiquously boring chain restaurants. It's home for now, so I won't knock it totally. There are certainly bountiful shopping and employment opportunities, and this exemplifies the thoroughly modern version of "land of plenty." Even our poor have too much stuff, which means this area was ready, willing and able to respond to the incoming Hurricane Katrina survivors with open arms and full goody bags.

We have the threat of tornadoes – a smaller but patently unfair form of weather that drops from the sky without warning and destroys things at random. I've had close brushes with two tornadoes – including one that hit downtown Fort Worth a few years ago – so I know we're not completely "safe" here. There is always some danger somewhere. In Colorado, there are constipated bears and mountains from which to inadvertently plummet to one's demise.

But we don't think of tornadoes every day. Nor do coastal residents fret and fume about tidal surges and damaging winds; if they did, they'd surely be on the next bus to Ohio.

I've heard it called "the Katrina effect," the mass movement from Galveston and Houston, but the smart ones would have left the area without the fresh memory of the Cat 5 storm that leveled parts of Mississippi and Louisiana. It's sometimes hard for me to have sympathy for those who don't leave, but that's not right. In New Orleans and Mississippi, for example, some people didn't have the option to leave because cash, gasoline and food vanished before it was apparent they were in grave danger. Some had nowhere to go and no way to get there. If the evacuations now to make way for Rita are because of the storm, then it's certainly a positive thing to come from the ordeal. For those who could and can leave now, but decide to stay, God be with you. You'll need all the help you can get.