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Lightning

There have been several experiences in my life where I have come to know the awesome beauty and terrifying majesty of lightning...

...the first was when I was very young - maybe eight years old. My parents were quite destitute at the time, and we were living (8 of us) in a two bedroom basement apartment. One night, a thunderstorm rose up. We had spent the evening in Orem at a park, and you could see the massive clouds boiling up over Provo where we lived. It was awesome, from that distance, to see the clouds frequently light up with inner glow and then fade back to blackness in the day's fading light. The rain began to pound our car as we drove down the hill into Provo. Racing inside to escape the weather, we quickly got ready for bed. But I could not sleep. The sound of thunder, rolling around the valley, through canyons and bouncing off the cliffs. It felt as though the mountains themselves were crashing down around me. Because we were in the basement, it was impossible to see the evolution of the storm, its progress across the sky. I am not sure how long the storm lasted, but it felt like an eternity, cowering in my bed, waiting for the storm to pass....

...the next was several years later. I had a place that I went when I was feeling teenage angst, a parking lot overlooking the valley. You can't have the same experience any more - things have grown up around the area such that it is not the same place I once lived. As I sat there in the small Toyota pick up I'd inherited from my dad, I looked up through the windshield. Directly over my head, high up in the clouds,  I saw what appeared to be a ball of lightning. It was sparking with smaller arcs of lightning surrounding a smaller, bright purple ball of plasma. It was completely and eerily silent. I have looked for similar displays since then, but I have never heard of anything or seen anything even close...

...one night, a few years ago, I was driving home from Idaho. I was traveling south on I-15, it must have been around 10 PM or so. Out over the Great Salt Lake, a massive thunderstorm was raging. I could see it, but there was no accompanying sound - just flashes of brilliant lightning. With the lake and the storm to my right - to the west - and the mountains to my left, the flashes lit up the mountains brilliantly, like a camera flash. I happened to be glancing out my window to the left, looking towards the mountains, when a flash of lightning lit up the whole surface of the mountain. It was incredible. Every tree, every bush, every cliff face and craggy rock was lit up in stark relief, black and white contrasts in incredible detail. I tried to catch that same experience later, but by the time I'd turn my head to see it again, the light was out, again...

...just yesterday, I was taking out the trash. It was not stormy, but there were clouds - very low, fast moving clouds that look like they'd just been lifted from the surface of the Gulf. I happened to look up at exactly the right second and the surface of the cloud was transected by three forked bolts of lightning. Because the cloud was so bright in the sunlight, it was difficult to see. There was no bright flash accompanying this display - just the faint traces of electricity moving across the cloud. It was amazing...

Comments

lillysmum said…
Great post. That's all. ;)

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