The storm began long before I walked down to
the sauna. I was reading Charlotte's Web to Kate when the rain
came pouring down in torrents. I listened to it pound on the
roof while I tucked her into bed. A little while later, the
rain lightened. Gently it tapped. A quiet shhhh. As if the
clouds had run a long way, and were stopping for a bit to catch
their breath. I walked down to the sauna in the light
rain.
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MATHER |
Stepping onto the hot room of the sauna, I
found that the cool water bucket was low. I poured it into the
hot water tank, and stepped out into the rain to fill it again
from the lake.
A few heavy, cold drops of rain spattered on
the bare skin of my back as I leaned over the dock to dip the
bucket in.
Ummm, it felt good to step back into the
warmth of the sauna. I sat back for a while, and read my book
while the rain came and went, and I soaked in the heat.
I could hear the storm in the background, the
thunder rumbling from afar.
When I couldn't take the heat any more, I
washed and rinsed inside the warmth of the hot room. Stepping
into the change room, I considered whether I would jump into
the lake for a quick swim. Naw.
Wrapped in my towel I sat on the porch under
the roof, out of the wet. There wasn't much to see in the
darkness of a stormy night. The lake lay flat under a little
misty fog that accompanied the rain.
I could just see the silhouette of the
shoreline all around the bay.
There were flashes to the north, another
flash to the south. Slowly I began to count, one, two, three…10
(new light to the south), 11, 12…24, 25. Then rumble, rumble
boom from the south.
The north storm was further away. It finally
sounded a few seconds later.
Quiet. Rain. More rain.
I sat simply gazing toward the western shore,
listening to the soft patter of rain on the roof above, on the
lake just a few meters away. Flash then crash!!! Less than half
a kilometre away! The bolt hit in the center of my
vision.
The image of the light burned itself into my
eyes.
It was a perfect bolt of lightning. Just a
little jagged, it had no significant side branches. Every time
I blinked, I could see it again. Even when I didn't blink, the
image of the bolt floated the view in front of me.
When my eyes were open, the latent image was
sort of pale. When I blinked, it was a luminescent green. And
when distant flashes of lightning briefly turned the darkness
of the bay into daylight, a black image of the bolt bisected
the scene.
I sat on the porch for another 10 minutes in
awe of the storm, and of the changing colours of the underlying
image on my retina.
The heart of the storm passed. It began to
get a little cool sitting there on the porch.
So I finally wandered on back through the
woods to the cabin.
