Blinded By The Light

The semi-tropics are a hell this time of year, thick with the madness of vegetation, fungus, mold. The humidity never ceases. Everywhere the air smells sickly sweet with rotten things. Poisonous mushrooms sprout up overnight. The sky is a flat silver turning gray. Violent lightening storms constantly erupt. 

I was driving on the edge of a thunderstorm this weekend. The wind was blowing and the rain just beginning to fall when lightning struck somewhere close by.  I was blinded.  First everything went white, then, quickly, black. This lasted only a fraction of a second, but it seemed permanent. I thought my retina had been damaged. Slowly, however, the world came back. I was still driving, brake lights blinking all around.

I have been stung by lightening three times in my life. I know the smell of ozone, the incredible sizzle that explodes. I’ve been in white outs on mountains while lightening struck all about. Last year I read about two people in different places getting struck by lightening on the same day.  Neither place was more than sixty miles from my house.  A young boy walking on the beach with his girlfriend was killed, his head popped open like a cantaloupe. The girl was unhurt. Forty miles away, a blind man was struck in the head and knocked out. When he came to, he could see his house. He had been blind for twenty years.  I’ve known mountain guides who were struck by lightening that went out through the bottom of their boots, the rubber souls melted, their feet singed.  Others have been killed straight out.

Lightening is a weird and terrible thing, not to be messed with.  Now I will add to a growing list my encounters with storms. I know what it means to be blinded by the light.