It was 1978. The eastern seaboard had been going through a drought. Creeks, once gurgling and splashing over the rocks, dwindled to a trickle. The air was hot and grew muggier and muggier with each passing week.
At a summer camp, everyone has a regular job (one they do all summer) and a rotating job (there are so many duties ranging from cleaning toilets to peeling potatoes to washing dishes that everyone gets to take his or her turn.) Since my regular job was looking after the trail rides, I rode upwards of 3 hours a day.
August 17. We'd gone nearly 8 weeks without rain. The dirt pathways were dusty, and some of the other staff and I wanted to take the horses for a jaunt that was outside the regular trail, so we got together and took off through the woods. Leaves scratched lightly against our skin as we traveled through the tree-arched pathways to the neighboring property, a farmer's field - the edge of which we'd gotten permission to ride on.
We heard it from a distance while we were riding the edge of the farmer's field at the far end of the wooded trail - and at first we didn't realize the danger we were in. A low rumble. The second surprisingly louder.
Thunder.
Inside I froze. I'd always been terrified of lightning - my family culture fostering a vibrant fear of unbridled electricity. Our parents would wake us up in thunderstorms in the middle of the night, just to sit in the living room in case we had to leave the house if it were struck. I'd heard how lightning came through the kitchen window while my grandmother was washing dishes, and took a fork right out of her hand. Or how my father - as a child - was pursued by ball lightning (ignited pockets of methane gas) as he ran across a pig pasture toward his house. All these things rocketed through my mind in that moment of time.
"Book it!" yelled one of the staff members, shattering my fear-fest, just before another peal ripped across the sky, seemingly right above our heads. We made our way as fast as the horses could run, toward the tree line, and turned back into the wooded path that was the only way back to the camp, slowing down as we did, to avoid having the animals trip on the bare tree roots in the pathway. And then the rain assaulted us - everything (including us) went from dry to wet in five seconds flat. Great, saucer-sized drops of rain soaked us, pelting and permeating everything. And always there was the acrid, metallic smell of electric air.
It was the smell of panic.
I could feel my heart beating in my throat. We were going from the frying pan into the fire. All those trees overhead - I was sure I was going to be hit - or one of the trees was going to be hit and crash down on me.
Each of the bright blue flashes of light melded into the next one. I remember the feeling of my soaked legs gripping the saddle, the warmth of the horse beneath me. I wanted to shut my eyes but could not afford to - I needed to be alert to keep from getting smacked by tree branches, to keep from directing the horse over too rough terrain.
The crashes became indistinguishable from each other. I'd never witnessed a storm that wild in my life - me, who would spend thunderstorms inside cowering under the kitchen table - and here I was in the middle of it and I couldn't run away. There was nowhere to run!
We rode the trail all the way back to the pasture and let ourselves in the gate, still being hammered with water. We were so relieved - at the edge of the tree line - to see the open-ended barn: a glorified lean-to, where the horses would gather away from the sun. We dismounted, drenched to our water-wrinkled skin, and removed the horses' bridles and saddles, putting them on their hooks in the barn, and broke open a couple of bales of hay for our mounts. Afterward, rain still teeming, we trudged back through more tree-lined paths to the camp. The others were running - I walked. After all, I was wet already; how could I get any wetter?
To my surprise, having survived the trip high up on horseback through the trail, I discovered that my fear had changed from a mountainous monster into something a whole lot smaller.
So instead of going to my dorm room immediately to dry off, I went to the neighboring dorm and knocked on the door of a good friend who was assigned there. She took one look at my face, hair plastered in ribbons along my cheeks, water running off my chin, and started to laugh. "It's raining!" I yelled over the thunder. She ran out into the rain with me and we laughed and laughed together, arms and faces raised to the sky, twirling like little children in the mud puddles, greeting each flash of lightning with hoots of approval. We could hear the creek roaring only a hundred feet away, filled almost to overflowing.
Neither of us ever forgot that day. Neither of us ever wants to.
At a summer camp, everyone has a regular job (one they do all summer) and a rotating job (there are so many duties ranging from cleaning toilets to peeling potatoes to washing dishes that everyone gets to take his or her turn.) Since my regular job was looking after the trail rides, I rode upwards of 3 hours a day.
August 17. We'd gone nearly 8 weeks without rain. The dirt pathways were dusty, and some of the other staff and I wanted to take the horses for a jaunt that was outside the regular trail, so we got together and took off through the woods. Leaves scratched lightly against our skin as we traveled through the tree-arched pathways to the neighboring property, a farmer's field - the edge of which we'd gotten permission to ride on.
We heard it from a distance while we were riding the edge of the farmer's field at the far end of the wooded trail - and at first we didn't realize the danger we were in. A low rumble. The second surprisingly louder.
Thunder.
Inside I froze. I'd always been terrified of lightning - my family culture fostering a vibrant fear of unbridled electricity. Our parents would wake us up in thunderstorms in the middle of the night, just to sit in the living room in case we had to leave the house if it were struck. I'd heard how lightning came through the kitchen window while my grandmother was washing dishes, and took a fork right out of her hand. Or how my father - as a child - was pursued by ball lightning (ignited pockets of methane gas) as he ran across a pig pasture toward his house. All these things rocketed through my mind in that moment of time.
"Book it!" yelled one of the staff members, shattering my fear-fest, just before another peal ripped across the sky, seemingly right above our heads. We made our way as fast as the horses could run, toward the tree line, and turned back into the wooded path that was the only way back to the camp, slowing down as we did, to avoid having the animals trip on the bare tree roots in the pathway. And then the rain assaulted us - everything (including us) went from dry to wet in five seconds flat. Great, saucer-sized drops of rain soaked us, pelting and permeating everything. And always there was the acrid, metallic smell of electric air.
It was the smell of panic.
Each of the bright blue flashes of light melded into the next one. I remember the feeling of my soaked legs gripping the saddle, the warmth of the horse beneath me. I wanted to shut my eyes but could not afford to - I needed to be alert to keep from getting smacked by tree branches, to keep from directing the horse over too rough terrain.
The crashes became indistinguishable from each other. I'd never witnessed a storm that wild in my life - me, who would spend thunderstorms inside cowering under the kitchen table - and here I was in the middle of it and I couldn't run away. There was nowhere to run!
We rode the trail all the way back to the pasture and let ourselves in the gate, still being hammered with water. We were so relieved - at the edge of the tree line - to see the open-ended barn: a glorified lean-to, where the horses would gather away from the sun. We dismounted, drenched to our water-wrinkled skin, and removed the horses' bridles and saddles, putting them on their hooks in the barn, and broke open a couple of bales of hay for our mounts. Afterward, rain still teeming, we trudged back through more tree-lined paths to the camp. The others were running - I walked. After all, I was wet already; how could I get any wetter?
To my surprise, having survived the trip high up on horseback through the trail, I discovered that my fear had changed from a mountainous monster into something a whole lot smaller.
So instead of going to my dorm room immediately to dry off, I went to the neighboring dorm and knocked on the door of a good friend who was assigned there. She took one look at my face, hair plastered in ribbons along my cheeks, water running off my chin, and started to laugh. "It's raining!" I yelled over the thunder. She ran out into the rain with me and we laughed and laughed together, arms and faces raised to the sky, twirling like little children in the mud puddles, greeting each flash of lightning with hoots of approval. We could hear the creek roaring only a hundred feet away, filled almost to overflowing.
Neither of us ever forgot that day. Neither of us ever wants to.
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