Lightning
So I've totally been out of touch here, but: I'm on vacation for a week visiting Hampshire College to see some people before they spread to the wind. I will try and give a detailed recount of that later (because it's the most interesting thing to happen in my life in months, and if it's not worth an entry I don't know what is) but I wanted to talk about something that happened last night.
I was coming back from a shower and checking my e-mail when I kept seeing flashes outside the corner of my eye. At first I thought it might be a police vehicle, but I soon realized it was lightning, and rushed to go outside. You see, we essentially never get lightning or thunder in Seattle, so this was exciting for me.
When I got outside, it was surreal. First, there was no rain and no thunder; just silent flashes of light in the sky. Second, it wasn't in one location, but in about a 140 degree angle around us; lightning was appearing all over the place, but far away; there must have been there different storms happening simultaneously, or some bizarre, long storm pattern.
I HAD to share this with someone, so I called up my friend Marie and she came outside. She was even more excited than I was, and we soon headed for the tennis courts in an isolated part of campus, so we could view it without any of the streetlights that dotted the main area.
It's hard for me to convey how wonderful it was. I don't engage with nature nearly as much as I feel I should, because so many of my interests are technological and indoors-oriented; living in the city without a car, I don't even really have the option most of the time. But here we were, lighting dancing all around us, crickets chirping, some strange bird or frog (it sounded like a mix between) keeping time. We must have been there for 15 or 20 minutes, and eventually the storm started dying down, reducing itself to just one area.
Later, I went to a party, and the storm hit us; rain started pouring down in one of those buckets-of-water, this-can-only-last-for-a-few-minutes ways. So of course I went outside and got soaked, because - for me - there are few ways to so directly commune with nature as face off with it in the middle of a downpour.
I was coming back from a shower and checking my e-mail when I kept seeing flashes outside the corner of my eye. At first I thought it might be a police vehicle, but I soon realized it was lightning, and rushed to go outside. You see, we essentially never get lightning or thunder in Seattle, so this was exciting for me.
When I got outside, it was surreal. First, there was no rain and no thunder; just silent flashes of light in the sky. Second, it wasn't in one location, but in about a 140 degree angle around us; lightning was appearing all over the place, but far away; there must have been there different storms happening simultaneously, or some bizarre, long storm pattern.
I HAD to share this with someone, so I called up my friend Marie and she came outside. She was even more excited than I was, and we soon headed for the tennis courts in an isolated part of campus, so we could view it without any of the streetlights that dotted the main area.
It's hard for me to convey how wonderful it was. I don't engage with nature nearly as much as I feel I should, because so many of my interests are technological and indoors-oriented; living in the city without a car, I don't even really have the option most of the time. But here we were, lighting dancing all around us, crickets chirping, some strange bird or frog (it sounded like a mix between) keeping time. We must have been there for 15 or 20 minutes, and eventually the storm started dying down, reducing itself to just one area.
Later, I went to a party, and the storm hit us; rain started pouring down in one of those buckets-of-water, this-can-only-last-for-a-few-minutes ways. So of course I went outside and got soaked, because - for me - there are few ways to so directly commune with nature as face off with it in the middle of a downpour.