Caught Inside an Electrical Storm, a Terrible Beauty is Born (Page 1 of 1)

You try to count seconds between lightning bolt and thunder, but there’s no interval. You’re inside the storm, baby, rain-beaten and pressed against the base of a dune topped with burnt and stunted shrubs, while the woman you love trembles against your chest. You wrap yourself around her, yet you’re scared too — you’d be lying to say otherwise — as the very air explodes incandescent white.

Looking back to that existential spell, you taste regret that it’s over, and then you understand why soldiers return to war zones. Why battling spouses rekindle fires of passion….

But I’m ahead of my story, which is this:

We awoke in the middle of our last night at our latest favorite campsite, awakened by white light from a three-quarters moon shining above our tent.

“Let’s run by moonlight,” I said.

My wife’s a good distance runner, so we’d planned to spend our last morning at the beach running to the tip of the peninsula the campground shares with a wildlife preserve. That destination, in view of the mainland, was six or seven miles distant, so we’d be running at least 13 miles, and I wanted none of the fierce heat daylight brings to St. Joe’s Peninsula in June.

“It’ll be cool both ways,” I pressed, “and just bright enough to see the waterline.” That’s where the footing is firm, we discovered our first day here.

Climbing from our tent, we sipped coffee, donned running shorts and secured camp. The moon shone gold vermilion, and by the time we navigated the path to the boardwalk down to the sea, old Luna had dropped behind a bank of steel gray clouds.

Still, faint light of predawn filtered in from the bayside and we could see the scalloped waterline where tides pressed sand enough to make it friendly to barefoot runners.

Through ambiance of dawn we ran rugged coastline as delicate white crabs, stout-colored crabs and armies of fiddlers skittered among our steps, seeking safety of ocean. Driftwood, jugs, bottles and shells washed in, as pelicans and gulls soared or skittered along the beach.

Each bend brought another craggy dune into view as blue dawn blended with tangerine and chartreuse, and day broke as if in a dream.

Like children, we anticipated arrival — how far now — until hopes were dashed by a park ranger on a four-wheeler who burbled past to tell us we still had at least a mile and a half to go, his the only human voice we would hear that morning.

Of course! Running shifting waterlines along scalloped coasts added miles to our journey. Still we pressed until at last we basked in weightlessness of warm waters at the point. We could see little houses of Mexico Beach, where we’d vacationed when our children were young.

Turning back was a bleak trek. We were down to a cupful of water and stamina was wearing thin. The risen sun painted us red and copper on the journey back.

Jeanne turns such runs into a meditation, picturing loved ones in turn and presenting them to God’s grace, you could say. At times I bend the practice to my own ways, tracing families and friends into distant generations and geographies.

Our trances offered solace of distraction only so long, and we occasionally stopped to dip into Gulf tides to cool parched skin, taste weightlessness and cessation from placing one foot before the other. Running again, it was disheartening to recognize driftwood and shells we’d seen on the journey out and realize how far we had yet to go.

Then focus shifted. Maybe you’ve seen the ocean’s horizon turn into a negative of itself as seawater takes on emerald clarity brighter than steel gray sky, darkening now to charcoal.

We watched that black sky crack open to cascades of lightning blazing through curtains of rain. I keyed on the next jagged bolt and counted down the seconds until thunder spoke.

“Storm’s three miles away,” I estimated. “If it comes ashore, we need to hit those dunes. Never mind keep-off signs, we can’t be the highest things on this beach.”

Jeanne nodded and ran on, pulling away from me in the rain as metallic needles bore down, stinging every inch of exposed flesh. I hit the ocean to dull the sting, then, lifting my head, looked around for Jeanne. She was a ghostly form running back to me, pointing and gesturing now toward dunes over and over.

I rose and, joining hands, we ran across exposed beach toward the gap between two dunes. Lightning lit terrain and thunder punctuated the moment as we threw ourselves against the base of a 20-foot-high dune and hunkered down in sand and rain.

Jeanne was a trembling leaf against my chest. We clung together as the storm stalked ocean and sand. It was as if the sky were a wobbly black spider above us on legs of fire.

Now we were of the fire, the water, the earth and sky, living in the moment instantaneous and eternal. Each bolt lit the earth incandescent and each peal rattled our bones.

Then, even as the rain doubled its intensity, the flashes decreased. Intervals between sound and fire grew and I knew the storm had moved on to stalk bay and mainland.

We would live to tell the tale.

Now, as I tell it, I think of an old line from Gerard Manley Hopkins:

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out…”
In beauty and power too large to contain or understand, godless or not, its grandeur flames out, given half a chance, reminding us of the terrible beauty of this living earth so primal, rich and rare.