We enjoyed a powerful summer deluge yesterday, black clouds piling up over the Cascades through the afternoon followed by lightning and thunder and a monsoonal downpour that knocked the dust out of the trees, washed off the roads, and refreshed something vital in my soul. Rain can do that, even if the hill we live on is a natural lightning rod. Lightning struck a ponderosa in our front yard three years ago, killing it outright, and two years ago a neighbor knocked on the door to say we had a tree on fire down behind the barn. I raced down there with a shovel--which was ambitious but worthless--to find a granddad juniper turned into a flaming fumarole.
I love the rain, and distant thunderstorms, but as a guiding principle Rullman does not do lightning--particularly when it’s close enough to raise the hair on my arms. I’ve got a touch of crazy Jimmy Blevins from All the Pretty Horses, which means I’m convinced the lightning is aiming for me, and although I don’t go full Blevins and strip naked in a gully, if the sky is electric I duck for cover. Full stop. It isn’t a cowering, mincing, sort of fear, rather a very sober respect for voltage sent down randomly from the cavorting Gods on Olympus.
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