The storm comes on. Steadily approaching the house. I wait with anticipation. You can tell when it’s going to be a good one. Taste it in the air. Rain, a good hard rain, has an earthy sharp smell. I don’t need anything more than a whiff of that scent to know that it’s coming.
A steady patter at first. The best storms build up slowly but surely over time. I remember one Summer on the Outer banks of North Carolina. A hurricane was coming in. A near miss on the clean side of the storm. Just a little category 1 so I knew I didn’t have much to worry. I sat in a reclining couch with a glass of ice tea in the glass covered front porch of my grandparents house and just watched the storm roll in from the Atlantic over the next 3 hours. Watched the waves rise out by the dock and the rain come down in sheets. Somehow it was soothing watching it all.
The storm intensifies. Distant thunder. The old kids trick of counting between the lightning flash and the thunder. 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 miss…. The next time I barely finish 2 Mississippi before the rumble. Getting closer. I see in my mind’s eye a Spring afternoon in New Mexico on top of a mountain with the rest of my scouting friends. In the distance we could see the lightning strikes of a storm hit the ground. We could track the storm’s progress as the lightning strikes got closer and closer. We knew we had to hurry down off this bald mountain and find cover before it arrived.
The storm has arrived. Lightning in its full glory with thunder accompanying it immediately. The lights flicker on and off nervously. Finally as a particularly close bolt lands they go totally off. Lightning itself is purple when it’s up close. Driving the back roads between College Station and Houston one Saturday morning. Miles from anywhere. No choice but to keep driving. Literally no one around to ask for help or shelter. Ahead of me a tree next to the road gets hit. Less than twenty feet away. My eyes are saturated by the brightness of the lightning bolt. A purple after glow dances across my field of vision and I have to struggle to stay on the road. Wonderstruck by how vivid it was. I don’t even remember the boom of the thunder.
The storm abates. Somewhat sad to see something so mighty patter out into a measly drizzle. So tame now compared to what it was moments ago. Walking cross the polo fields of A&M trying to get home. No car, no ride, no other way to get home but walk in the storm. The driving rain lashing at my face stings. It’s pitch black out. The only light coming from the lightning. In the distance the lightning makes all sorts of crazy patterns as it dances in the skies. Thunder making everything shake. Every inch of me soaked in rain. Nothing for it but to put my head down and walk on. As I get to my apartment complex the rain suddenly stops, the skies open up and a small shaft of sun comes through the clouds. I have to stop and laugh. All that drama for nothing. If I’d waited half an hour I could have been dry right now.
“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.” – Macbeth
Recent Comments