Thunderstorms were crossing the mountains in waves one morning in the spring, and while trying to get in my morning hike up the ridge after one passed, I got caught in the next. I knew the danger. Lightning strikes around 300 people a year in the United States, injuring most, killing one out of 10.
And once I saw lightning blow a large yellow poplar tree into bits. I decided to chance it and headed for my usual destination, a rock outcrop behind the house. I thought I’d get back down in time. And I might have, if I hadn’t stood there like the proverbial deer in the headlights transfixed by the next oncoming electrical storm.
What I saw carried me back 15 years to when Becky and I were in a gallery in London looking at a painting by the 19th century English artist J.M.W. Turner. It was his masterpiece of a storm bearing down on a ship at sea. The painting shows the storm, reared up and blotting out the sky, about to break on the tiny ship like a dark titanic wave, and it convinced me of two things. First, that the story must be true about Turner, how he had himself tied to the mast of a ship to experience the fury of a storm at sea without being washed overboard. Here was an artist who knew first-hand the unstoppable, obliterating power that nature can unleash. Second, it convinced me that Turner possessed great creative power to be able to express such an experience in paint.
But that morning a real live rumble of thunder reminded me that I was not in a London gallery. I was standing on an outcrop up Moses Creek staring at a blue-black storm writ large across the western sky and about to break on me. I was Turner on the little ship.
At the last instant I turned and hunched my shoulders to the blast — and there in the east was the morning’s brightness, a red sunrise, but one contracting, growing smaller, in retreat. “Red sky in morning, Sailors take warning!” I had the odd sensation that I was looking out through a camera lens while its aperture was constricting tighter, tighter. Then the red warning light blinked out. Hoping there was truth in another old saying, “Better late than never,” I started down the trail, buffeted by wind and a cold, pelting rain. I knew how many trees on the ridge had lightning scars.
I was rounding the first switchback when a bolt hit somewhere above. I can’t tell you how close it was, but I can say that I didn’t see a flash then hear a bang. It was a flash-bang all at once. It was a resounding FLANG. The good thing, of course, is that I did see and hear it. But uppermost in my mind was the next strike — the one I might not hear, the one that might strike here.
By the time I reached the house, I was rain-soaked and flash-shy. Stripping down, I went to the bedroom to tell Becky all about it. Sometimes she sleeps in until I get back from my walk. But Becky was not there. The bedside lamp was on, the alarm clock was blaring, the covers had been flung back—all signs of a quick exit. Then I remembered that when a really sharp storm strikes, she goes to the basement. Why she does that has always been a mystery to me. Down there she misses out on the storm! But that morning I sensed the why.
I must not have sensed it sensibly enough. Although thunderstorms were still in the forecast, I went back up the ridge later that day to saw out a tree that had been blown across the trail. I had on earmuffs and safety glasses, and, with the chainsaw ripping through the wood like a snarling beast, I had to concentrate on the teeth. Chainsaws cut with 700 teeth a second. Suddenly the ground around me darkened and a gust of wind whipped up the leaves. Shutting off the saw, I turned, and — here came another storm.
This time I started down the trail as fast as my aging knees would take me, which was pretty fast, since I had wings of fear on my feet. I didn’t make it far before three strikes shook the ridge and the heavens opened. I felt extra nervous because I was carrying a chunk of lightning-loving metal in my hand — the chainsaw. It had been a trusty beast for years, and I didn’t want to leave it up there in the elements where it might get struck.
An inch of rain was in the gauge by the time I reached the back door. When I peeled off my clothes for the second time that day, I found that a piece of paper I’d jotted some thoughts on and had tucked in a shirt pocket had turned into a soggy wad. I unfolded the paper and flattened it out, only to see that my writing had run together into an inky blot. I could make out just one word. It said, “Kneel.”
(Burt and Becky Kornegay live in Jackson County. “Up Moses Creek” comes out the second week of each month. To see more of Gary Palmer’s work, go to garypalmerillustration.com)