A Stray Bolt of Lightning
Most people who regularly go camping in a wooded landscape have experienced huddling in a tent while rainstorms and thunderstorms rage about them. You do, in a way, get used to them, once you've experienced the first one. It's not comfortable, but it is endurable. And eventually the rain does stop, the thunder ceases its incessant clashing, and the lightning strikes ebb. You sit there, waiting.
If the storm has occurred at an awkward time, when you wanted to prepare your dinner, you've got to wait it out. And hope that the woods will speedily absorb all that moisture. Of course by then you know that you can rely on your tent to keep you dry. Although you also wonder whether the high winds that invariably accompany a rousing thunder storm will blow that tent over, and you with it.
The suspense is eventually over. The wind, the thunder, the rain gradually move off elsewhere to complicate others' lives. And you emerge. And you get on with your life, appreciating how much cooler it is now, fresh-and-fragrant smelling. And look at that - the sun is out, the birds are singing. All's right with the world. There's nothing quite like the camping experience.
Of course it isn't all that pleasant when you're canoeing and get caught out in the middle of the lake with the sudden onset of a storm. Or when you're alpine camping, got your tent set up on the flattest portion of the side of a mountain top, and you've been day-hiking elsewhere on other peaks, see the approach of the black thunderclouds and scramble to get back to the tent before it hits.
And then sit there, two or three of you in the tent, waiting out the furious thunder sounding as though it knows you're there and wants to make sure you know it's there. And the rain pelting down, threatening the stability of the tent perched on granite, on that slight slope. Knowing that you'll survive, so you might as well appreciate the power and the majesty of the spectacle above.
It's entirely different, though, when a tragedy occurs. How likely is it, after all, that people, two young adults and an infant - keeping dry in their tent set up in a wooded area in a camp ground with other tents, rough cabins, rough amenities and plenty of other people around - get hit by a stray bolt of lightning? With all those trees standing guard around the tents, why the tent?
This must surely be what the young wife of the young man who was killed by a lightning strike on Sunday morning at Alfred-Plantagenet will occupy her thoughts with. The 26-year-old Ottawa man was taken by ambulance to Hawkesbury General Hospital, where he died. His wife and their infant son were injured but they will recover.
From their injuries, of course, never from the loss of the child's father.
If the storm has occurred at an awkward time, when you wanted to prepare your dinner, you've got to wait it out. And hope that the woods will speedily absorb all that moisture. Of course by then you know that you can rely on your tent to keep you dry. Although you also wonder whether the high winds that invariably accompany a rousing thunder storm will blow that tent over, and you with it.
The suspense is eventually over. The wind, the thunder, the rain gradually move off elsewhere to complicate others' lives. And you emerge. And you get on with your life, appreciating how much cooler it is now, fresh-and-fragrant smelling. And look at that - the sun is out, the birds are singing. All's right with the world. There's nothing quite like the camping experience.
Of course it isn't all that pleasant when you're canoeing and get caught out in the middle of the lake with the sudden onset of a storm. Or when you're alpine camping, got your tent set up on the flattest portion of the side of a mountain top, and you've been day-hiking elsewhere on other peaks, see the approach of the black thunderclouds and scramble to get back to the tent before it hits.
And then sit there, two or three of you in the tent, waiting out the furious thunder sounding as though it knows you're there and wants to make sure you know it's there. And the rain pelting down, threatening the stability of the tent perched on granite, on that slight slope. Knowing that you'll survive, so you might as well appreciate the power and the majesty of the spectacle above.
It's entirely different, though, when a tragedy occurs. How likely is it, after all, that people, two young adults and an infant - keeping dry in their tent set up in a wooded area in a camp ground with other tents, rough cabins, rough amenities and plenty of other people around - get hit by a stray bolt of lightning? With all those trees standing guard around the tents, why the tent?
This must surely be what the young wife of the young man who was killed by a lightning strike on Sunday morning at Alfred-Plantagenet will occupy her thoughts with. The 26-year-old Ottawa man was taken by ambulance to Hawkesbury General Hospital, where he died. His wife and their infant son were injured but they will recover.
From their injuries, of course, never from the loss of the child's father.
Labels: Catastrophe, Environment, Family, Nature
posted by Pieface @ 7:02 PM
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