I miss the flat lands of my youth. I live in a valley. Mountains shelter me from most bad weather. Which I guess is nice, but once I lived. My father refused to let his future men fear anything. If a fear was voiced, you can bet the next thing you encountered would be just that thing. Strange twisted man, himself deathly afraid of heights, would scale a 40' tree with child in tow. I blame him for a lot, but I have to give the devil his due as well. We lived in the low foothills of NC. No natural shelter from storms like my current valley. When a storm hit you felt it in all it's glory, and my father loved storms. Where some huddled their family close inside during a heavy thunder storm, my father took us out on the porch to observe the wind, rain, and crashing lightening. It was one of the few things we did as a family. Early on, I honestly didn't get it, but looking back, in those moment's he lived. He seemed at ease, and there was a glow about him. Later as my life started to take it's own shape, I caught myself one day thinking 'this is right.' Not a huge epiphany, but I was at the river standing 30' out on a dock during a huge electrical storm. It wasn't the first time I'd been there, nor was it the first time in a storm. I came there often when my heart was heavy and aching, and always during a storm. In that loud blustering storm, with it's chilling rain, and crashing lightening, everything else melted away. It wasn't an adrenaline rush or thrill ride. My storms were the place where my mind, my heart, my being could relax. Everything I could possibly think or feel was over shadowed by the storm. A logical mind would worry about life, but those thunder storms gave me life. When the world weighed so heavy I couldn't breathe, I ventured out into the storm and I lived. |