Beneath the Storm: How Nature’s Fury Sparked a Lifetime of Wonder

Aren’t most kids scared of storms? I assume it’s the sudden noise of the thunder.

Back In My Day

I’m not sure what triggered it, but I used to be terrified of thunderstorms when I was little. Just absolutely petrified. Lots of tears, especially in the middle of the night.

At some point in the late 70s, my dad leased a cabin on the north end of Seneca Lake, and we began to spend weekends there during the spring and fall, and sometimes an entire week in the summer. It was fairly small, just one big room that we partitioned off with a curtain. The whole place was maybe a thousand square feet. But there was a real fireplace that I loved in the fall, because none of the fireplaces in the Marietta house worked. There was a covered and screened back porch where we ate meals quite often, and a garage-sized screened-in porch on a lower section of the lot, connected to the house by a covered stairway. Hal and I would sometimes rig a hammock or a cot on the big porch.

That giant cavernous porch was where I got over my fear of thunderstorms. My brother and I were down there one night when a storm came rolling in. The roof over the porch was sheets of green translucent corrugated plastic, so it still let a fair amount of light through, and with twenty-foot-high screened walls, I had a great view of the storm as it arrived. I was 11 or so and normally I’d have been terrified of the storm.

That night though, when I woke to the first rumbles, I wasn’t scared at all, and it was a doozy of a thunderstorm. But I just kicked back on the cot (or hammock; I can’t recall which) and watched the flashes light up the sky. A few close strikes made me nervous, but overall I just enjoyed the show. I think I started comparing it to a fireworks show, and I loved fireworks. My parents said the next morning they were surprised that I didn’t come running in, but they were happy about it.

Kids Of My Own

As my kids grew up, they went through the same general storm terrors that I did. One day, Youngest Daughter (maybe four or five years old) was hiding in my lap, or my wife’s lap, as a good boomer rumbled through Central Ohio. Middle Son, who’d recently gone all in on learning about weather stuff at 10 or 11, came over to comfort her.

“Don’t worry. It’s not the thunder that can hurt you. It’s the lightning that can strike the house, set you on fire, and kill you.”

Yeah, thanks, kid. Youngest Daughter just turned 18 and she still doesn’t like storms.

I love watching storms these days. Let me just sit back somewhere with a clear view of the sky and watch the storm roll through. I find the thunder and lightning very soothing, even more so than the rhythm of the falling rain.

The power and the beauty of the lightning as it arcs through the sky fascinate me. I’ve caught a few good photos, ironically with my older camera that wasn’t really designed for something like this. I’ve even dabbled with the idea of buying a special trigger for the camera that’s designed to catch lightning strikes. The cheap ones are still a couple of hundred dollars, so it’s not really an option right now. Maybe someday.

I love our place out in the country because of all of the trees. We have three acres, and probably two-thirds of it is filled with trees. The flip side to that is that there are too many trees for me to get a good look at the sky when a storm does come through.

Oh, the sacrifices we have to make. I suppose if I ever get back into photography, I’ll have to start driving out somewhere to get my storm photos. Until then, I’ll just sit on the porch, relax, and listen to the rumble.

This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge, hosted by Long and Short Reviews. Check out other bloggers at this week’s post.

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