Earthquakes

Fault Drawing from US Geological Survey

Three days ago, there was an earthquake here in New England. The center of the quake was in Southern Maine but it was felt all over Eastern New England. My family and I didn't feel it here on Cape Cod but some people we know say they did. Then again, some people feel earthquakes even when there are no earthquakes. And some people feel an earthquake when they are told there was an earthquake. I'll leave it at that. Here's a link to a story from a newspaper that knows earthquakes. And here's a link to the information about this quake at the US Geological Survey - the experts about earthquakes in general.

This, of course, reminds me of a story about my own experience with an earthquake. Yes, I may be self-absorbed but I only know these things about myself. In my sophomore year at Bucknell University, I was living in Hulley House - a small, old house owned by the university that was used (back in the early 1970s) to house some students when there wasn't enough room in the dormitories. We were on the edge of the campus but I really liked it there. There were about 20 or so men in the house and we all got along pretty well. We lived two to a room and had a nice kitchen area and a large, shared living room with a TV. Another nice feature was that we could get up to the relatively-flat roof through a trap door in the ceiling of the top floor. My roommate and I lived on that top floor on the corner of the house in the rear - farthest from the road and the front door.

I often did my work with headphones on with music playing that kept out the outside sounds. As I said, everyone in the house got along pretty well and we often got along loudly. So, one evening, as was normal, I was reading and working on my classwork with my headphones on. At some point, I thought I felt the floor shaking. As I mentioned, Hulley House was old and sometimes, when my roommate would walk around, the floor would shake. Or the other guys in the house would get really rowdy and shake the whole house. But I didn't remember it ever being this bad. I turned around to see if it was my roommate and saw that it was not. The shaking increased and I began to worry. It must be an earthquake! I'd never experienced one but this must be it.

I pulled off my headphones and headed out of the room when I heard the train horn. It wasn't an earthquake at all but one of the trains that periodically rumbled about 20 - 30 feet away from our corner of the house. I'd certainly heard the trains and seen them before (that's another reason I liked Hulley House so much) but I'd never had my headphones on when one of the trains passed by. The shaking was no worse than any other time but those other times, I'd heard the train from far off and was prepared for the shaking. But it never seemed all that bad because I knew what was going on.

It's just like a lot of things that seem bad because we don't know the whole story. Things seem bad when our view is limited. Everything seems worse when you're lying in bed early in the morning - unable to sleep - unable to do anything about it. I try to never make any decisions when I'm feeling sick, when I can't see or hear clearly or when I'm sleepy. But that doesn't stop me from feeling like I'm in an earthquake when I don't have all the information. I just try not to shout, "The sky is falling!" until I know for sure.