Rock & Roll Nature

I don't have a photograph of the lightning that struck in my backyard yesterday during one of our incredibly rare thunderstorms on the California coast. It cracked the air in two around my house. Habitually counting, as I've done since Mrs. Pylant's third grade class, to determine how far away the lightning hit (1/5 is the ratio: one second for every mile), I realized after half a second that I'd seen it hit outside my back door, and the seconds I tallied were the length of the thunder. TEN seconds. Give me that old time religion!

I don't have a photograph of the rollicking earthquake that came tonight: Logan's first. After decades in California, I have developed a built-in seismograph—it's what folks do. You learn to differentiate between a heavy truck on a freeway late at night, which rumbles somewhat, and the literal shaking of the earth. A car backfire might sound like a gunshot (ouch!), but when the chimes and stemware start to make noise, well, all systems alert.

It's amazing what happens in eight seconds or so. It feels like much longer. This time, Logan was in the room, so I grabbed his hand and we made it fun. Well, being with Bob and Logan made it fun. Because here's your little child, looking at the big people for how to interpret the world. I just braced my feet and we (and by "we," I mean "Bob") laughed. I laughed when it stopped. I could do that.

Two natural wildnesses in two days. I'll let you know if a pestilence of frogs appears. So far, just the one (frog in our backyard pond).

And here is a promise, relating to the photo above. Today we (Logan, his mama, and I) visited Camp Joy Garden in Boulder Creek. It's an amazing community, farm, enterprise, and non-profit that has been in existence since 1971. I can think of no better descriptor for it than "a beehive." Because traffic was so bad on Highway 9 (the "road to Hana," as I think of it) we had the briefest of visits, but Camp Joy is such an amazing place. It's a farm where a trailer park was once an alternative. It's a farm, and a miracle, and a CSA, and a place that makes honey and candles and wreaths, and so much more. Goats and chickens and wreaths, oh my.

More to come soon. And with that promise, no "Thought for the Day."

Did YOU live through lightning and an earthquake in one day?

I've been through both, but not both in two days, nor both in two months or years.

Welcome to the Hotel California.

Thanks for visiting. That is my Thought for the Day.

Comments

[Lydia]

Yikes, Tana -- if I were a person who believes in signs (and I do, to a certain extent), I would definitely be searching for meaning. What is the natural world trying to tell you?!

[GG Mora]

Well, we took a nearly direct positive strike (look it up) back in August, half an hour after having a discussion about what might happen if the house were struck by lightning. We still haven't figured out where, exactly, it hit, but the underground wire for the dog's invisible fence grounded the current into the house – right into the transmitter box for the fence (which was unplugged at the time). The box exploded and shot flames up the wall – we didn't discover this until the next morning. The scorch marks left around the room indicate that we were way more than lucky not to have had a house fire that night.

I'd say that counts as the equivalent of lightning and earthquake in one day. Lightning is a terrifying force – scares me more than anything in the world.