Faster than Lightning

Dear Reader,

              It has been hot lately. We have come out of the pleasant days of April and the summer heat is coming back like an unwanted guest who cannot take a hint. We have been a little dry, but thankfully not as dry as some parts in the country where they are having horrible droughts. Our rainy season should be starting now and it will probably not stop until about the beginning to mid-October. People don’t usually think about it, but our rainy season in Florida is almost like other states’ winter. We have to put things on hold because it’s either currently raining, going to rain, or too wet to get out to where we need to be. There are some pastures that we simply cannot get a truck or even a tractor out to until the rain has stopped for about a month and the water has dried up. We have seasonal ponds that show up in the beginning of summer and go away at the beginning of fall. Needless to say, we are very familiar with 4-wheel drive.

              One thing that rainy season means for ranch kids is trying to feed before a storm comes. Sometimes it cannot be avoided because it starts raining before it’s time to feed and it doesn’t stop until long after. I don’t mean just a steady rain; I mean monsoon level rains sprinkled with lighting that spreads all across the sky. It is unpleasant to feed in the dark and annoying to have to go out after you have already eaten dinner and are curled up with a book. So, ranch kids can be very determined to feed before a storm. We check the radar on our phones often and plan accordingly and just end up feeding an hour early, but other times a storm pops up out of nowhere. When that happens, we are suddenly able to magically feed in 20 minutes what usually takes 45 minutes or more. Lighting and high winds can create just the right kind of encouragement to hurry and get all of the animals fed before it starts to pour. But sometimes we don’t quite beat the storm. Sometimes we come inside sprinkled with the first drops of a storm, other times we come in soaked through all of our clothes. There have been times where I have been out in one of our bigger pastures catching a horse that was needed the next day and thinking “This is how I am going to die, out here, alone on my horse.” I have also thought this running to the house from the barn as faster than I knew I was capable of. So far, I have managed to not get struck by lightning.

              It may seem that we are not scared of lighting or storms, but ranchers are probably more cautious of lightning than the general population. I can remember my parents not letting us go out to feed even if it wasn’t raining because the lightning was so bad. Or even people thinking I was afraid lightning because I was the first one to suggest that we go inside. But when you have seen what lightning can do, it makes you a little more cautious. We have gone out to check cattle and found them struck by lightning or found burn spots on the ground where lightning struck and the grass burned for a little bit. During one storm we heard lightning strike close by and looked out to see one of our pastures on fire, luckily my dad was able to get out there and put it out before it could spread. (If you could see our house every time we heard a close strike you would see the curtains draw back in different rooms as we all peek out the windows.)  

              Despite its dangers lightning storms are one of my favorite things to watch. I love to feel the wind blowing on me as I watch the big clouds roll in like the tide. Or how spectacular it is when lightning spreads all across the sky and lights up the night and you can somehow feel eternity in the span of a second and then the crashing boom that follows. My favorite place to see this is at the beach, there is something special about watching a storm come in on the beach. The only other place that I have experienced lightning outside of Florida is Oklahoma at a Bible camp. When we first got the warning that everyone had to go back to their cabins, I wasn’t scared, but I did want to get back quickly. I did enjoy watching the sky, the lightning out there is different, it shakes your soul. I was half expecting Mufasa to appear in the clouds like on Lion King.

              But that is one of the beautiful things about nature, it keeps us humble because we can never quite conquer it or control it. It mesmerizes us, but we can never hold it. It makes us feel tiny when we are in its grasps and dares us to doubt if there is a Creator.