A Tragedy in Aurora and Summer Thunderstorms

Aurora, Colorado

It has been a strange week for me personally, and it culminated with a national tragedy.

It has been unsettling for me to watch the public reaction to the event in Colorado so politicized, usually in the contrived context of NOT being politicized. Shamefully, in the name of righteousness, too many people of diverse philosophies and opinions have selfishly used the shooting in Aurora to advance their respective causes.

And it’s been sickening and ironic to see the anger and venom-tinged discourse as folks try to process how and why such a horrible thing happened.

I have my own opinions to that end, but out of respect , will keep them to myself.

Summer Thunderstorms

This week I witnessed the most impressive (if relatively short) displays of thunder and lightning and heavy rain I can remember.

This has been a long, hot and too dry summer for the entire country; supposedly the worst drought in 50 years. To make matters worse, for the past couple of weeks, although it hasn’t rained, the air here has been heavy with sticky humidity, taunting me and my parched brown lawn.

Then finally , as if on cue, for two nights in a row, the sky erupted with dramatic booms of thunder and flashes of lightning. Some of what I watched was heat lightning, I’m sure, but much of it came with huge continuous rolling thunder. The rain came in buckets; the drops, ridiculously big, seemed magnified for effect. My lawn and shrubs, faked out by the downpour, seemed to celebrate.

The 20 minute storms, though glorious, probably were just teases; the rain, not the soaking kind, was too little to remedy the drought conditions. Still the storms provided great entertainment, and served to remind me of the majesty of nature. She decides if, when and how she’ll respond to our complaints.

As I sat on my porch, safe but surrounded by the storms, I was transported to summers more than 40 years ago, when I often stayed with my grandparents in Lake George. I especially loved summer thunderstorms there, listening to a heavy rain’s rhythm on their old tin roof. Even then, I was comforted and amazed and humbled by the randomness and power of nature.

The storms this week also reminded me of camping with my family and close friends in the Adirondacks many years ago, when a severe “supercell” thunderstorm ripped through the mountains. The women and children were “cozy” in the relative safety of a pop-up trailer while my buddy and I roughed it in a tent. I was reading with a flashlight propped on my shoulder when the storm commenced. The thunder shook the ground violently and the sky seemed to stay lit for long seconds with each bolt of lightning. Great torrents of rain gushed past our tent, which flapped and snapped in the wind. At that altitude the lightning seemed extra close, and the creaking and swaying of the towering pines that surrounded us made us feel especially vulnerable. The experience was terrifying, but we were more in awe than frightened. My friend and I share similar dark senses of humor, and spent the duration of the storm exchanging wise-ass comments about being crushed and drowned.

We weren’t.