I Feel the Earth Move Under My Feet

Instantly I was awake. And, puzzlingly, frightened. Like I can imagine one would feel hearing an intruder in the house. All senses on alert.

What was that??

I looked over at Cynthia. Her eyes were wide open too. It seemed like the windows had rattled or something. We listened. Was it wind? We've had a couple of windy days before, but nothing like that.

Odd--it seemed perfectly still outside. What time is it? A little before 7.

Then it happened again. Out of nowhere, for just a second, maybe two, the windows rattled fiercely. The whole building---moved.

Silence and stillness. Except for our bedroom door. Was it eerily swaying back and forth? In an instant we realized--earthquake!

What do you do? We didn't know what to do; we'd never experienced an earthquake before. So we just laid there and waited. And waited.

Nothing. That was it. Over.

I threw on my bathrobe, fired up the computer, and Googled "Ecuador earthquake August 12, 2010." Sure enough, a 6.9 quake had just happened a couple of hundred miles NE of us. Thankfully, in what appeared on the map to be an uninhabited jungle area.

I've been in some super heavy surf. I've ridden out a hurricane. Neither compared to the sheer, brutal force the planet unleashed in those couple of seconds. Wow.