Greetings from Camp Lure …

Fall -- ice was growing around the edges of the lake -- fingers of frost found on the window panes. The trees were starting to blaze with color. Time to cut wood and get the boats out of the water. It’s a sad and beautiful time in the mountains.

We headed for Florida like a nomadic tribe. My family and I packed up and went South following a long line of ducks, geese, and S.U.V.s. We made a stop in Schwenksville, Pa., where me and the boys did a memorable performance at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. It was so thrilling to play the music I love with artists like Chris Smither and Taj Mahal, and to see so many old friends and fans there and to make so many new ones.

Me and the guys had a fine time at “The Point” on Philly’s Main Line this fall and a magical night at a neat Greenwich Village style coffee house in Sea Isle City, N.J. called “Coffee.COMedy.” It was just me, Fred and Kenny doing a trio. (Fred DiTomasso plays bass, Kenny Bernard plays drums) and it was so laid-back and comfortable, it was like playing in somebody’s living room.

We drove on southward and hit a tropical storm and crawled for hours through blinding rain -- a flooded debris-strewn landscape with cars and semi’s flipped and jack-knifed all over the place. When we got to Florida, Hurricane Francis was spinning and dancing out in the Atlantic. For a while it was impossible to tell where she would go. Then she took a definite turn to the west and for the worse. We boarded up the house and headed for higher ground. We holed up in an Orlando hotel room watching the storm on the news. Watching as the north band of the storm, the worst of it, slammed down on the Vero Beach coastline, the north end, which is exactly where our beach house sat with only a dune of sand and sea grape between it and the raging ocean.

The wind blew the roof off and it rained for three days straight, soaking everything in the house and ruining most of our personal possessions and the house itself. The ceilings caved in and the floors buckled and split. The walls dripped, sagged, and sloughed off their framing. Precious antique oil paintings melted on their canvases. Before we could get a new roof on, it rained some more.

And then Hurricane Jeanne came.

We headed west again to Sanibel and Captiva Island, where we thought we could escape the storm and find some normalcy and maybe even some of the natural beauty of the Florida we had known. We didn’t realize that Hurricane Charley had come through here just weeks before. It was absolutely shocking to see the devastation this storm had brought to these beautiful islands. This once thickly forested tropical paradise was laid barren now with a few twisted trees left standing there beside broken and decimated homes. There was not much left, but we found a hotel that was in pretty good shape with air conditioning, a swimming pool, and food and drink.

When we got back to our house we found more of what we saw in Captiva. Not only was our house gutted, but now all of our trees and gardens were gone -- not to mention we no longer had any neighbors. All the houses were gone … totally destroyed by the storm. Just piles of rubble on the sand. One house is now just a flight of wooden steps leading to a wooden door, nothing else. Not a stick or a wall is standing.

There hasn’t been a serious hurricane in Vero Beach for one hundred years. You never think it’s going to happen to you, then you get it doubled. You never think of the repercussions of a storm like this. For weeks there is no electricity, no food, no gas, no water, no light. It is very hot and humid. People are homeless. No hotels. Some people couldn’t afford them anyway. I felt most sorry for the old and sick out there.

I guess there’ll be a song in all this. Even as I go through this ordeal, a part of me is elated and awed to see Mother Nature still rules supreme, and that with all our techno- genius and urban sprawl she can bring us back down to Earth with a wave of her hand. I heard they were working on a way to harness hurricanes and tame them. I hope I’m not alive to see it…

We are all OK, just waiting to see what happens next. I am looking forward to getting back on the road. Me and the band are excited to be playing a new venue for us --

the SteelCity Coffee House in Phoenixville, PA. We hope you’ll all come out to see us there. I promise I won’t mention the word “hurricane” and will deliver some good music to y’all ! The date is Saturday, October 16 th.

The next night on the 17 th we will be hosting a benefit for the flood victims of Medford and Medford Lakes, New Jersey, where Susan and I used to live before the boys were born. We will be appearing with two great New Jersey bands -- Grey Eye Glances and deSoL -- at the magnificent Lenape Regional Performing Arts Center in Marlton, NJ, the next town over from Medford. Tickets are just $25 and tax-deductible, so please come out and show your support. With this show we have a special surprise for all Robert Hazard and the Heroes fans and also fans of the Hooters. John Lilly, one of the original Heroes, will be playing guitar with us for this special event. It should be a magical evening for all of us.

See you on the road.