That time I saw horizontal lightning
Stranger things are yet to come
The afternoon thunderstorm came rolling up so I had gone inside. I was standing at my big living room window looking out across the valley, wondering how big this storm was going to be. There were a few flashes visible even though the late afternoon light was still high. The rumbles came, but not so fast the storm was actually all that close. Or so I thought.
And then the flash caught my eye, and my jaw dropped. Because there was horizontal lightning racing up the valley! A white-hot bolt of sheer energy, racing just above eye height from where I was standing looking out. Running clean up the middle of the valley so fast I wondered for a moment if I imagined it. During daylight hours. What else is there to say but ‘WOW’? Followed by “Whoa!”
I remember my mother telling crazy stories about prairie lightning storms and how you really need to go inside. She remembered seeing ball lightning as a kid – one of the rarest forms out there – and it terrified her.
I have seen some breathtaking strikes. But I have never seen horizontal lightning close to the ground until this recent event (July 2023). I’d be happy not to see it again. The thought of being struck out of nowhere by a horizontal beam - scary! Horizontal lightning typically travels just under the clouds. I have no idea how it could have been in the middle of the valley on a day without massive wind or low cloud? But there it was.
And I suspect more and more of us will experience this sense of – “what the hell was that” – thanks to climate change. Where my sister lives in Alberta, tornado warnings are becoming “a thing”. Here in British Columbia, we are talking about the humidex like we know what that is.
High humidity here? I live in a semi-arid place, so sorry what? Just take a walk across the yard to find your clothes glued to you and you will understand the difference humidity makes to the heat equation. It’s been the strangest summer I can remember for humidity here.
It feels like that part in the movie where one more bad thing happens and you just quit and say ‘yeah, right, okay I’m done now with this story line. Contrived. Overreach’. Except we can’t quit the story line – or at least not that easily.
The chain of events just keeps getting longer. Covid 19. The climate crisis of 2021 that burned my neighboring community to the ground in a matter of hours. Then the atmospheric river that came later flooding southwest BC. Then intense cold and tons of snow ending 2021. Part of 2022 was okay, but then the deciduous trees all had their leaves still in Oct . . .Nov. . . Dec. . . Jan . .. some right through to March and April??? Check out the picture! The leaves were all on and green in November.
And, sure enough, there are consequences when natural systems that have worked for thousands of years are suddenly disrupted. Some of the trees survived, but are very weak. Some have little fruit. Others died all the way back to the ground, losing all their growth, and still others are in fact dead. Each thing, big and small, just one more link in the chain falling off until our connections are all broken. Common knowledge of how things work no longer applies. We don’t know how (or if) things will keep working anymore.
So while the appearance of horizontal lightning down my valley doesn’t rank as a catastrophic event on anyone’s scale, it’s just one more story about how strange things are happening more and more out there. My hope of humans finding ecological harmony again takes a nosedive. I know in my heart that helping people figure out how to grow food for themselves, discover their mind-body connection, and seek ecological harmony are things I need to spend my time on and that is part of what writing The Naturalized Human hopes to do.
But I can tell you, if ball lightning shows up here (or a tornado!), then I’m outta here! Where on earth would I go is a whole other question to consider. There’s no place like home. There’s no place without strange things happening.
So my dear reader, it’s time to take some serious steps if you want to keep your home, or even if you dream of moving to a better place somewhere else. Because this climate change storm isn’t going to pass lightly or quickly. We are in for a very wild ride. The weather shifts are taking their toll everywhere in the world. And we all better find some skills to help us through.
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