Last night, on our way to our North Carolina kampsite, the most amazing thing happened. For hours, we were surrounded by heat lightning in the clouds which was really beautiful. It looked like flashes from cameras lighting up the sky non-stop, really a second didn’t go by without more lightning somewhere in the sky. But suddenly, it started to downpour again and the lightning became bigger bolts accompanied by loud thunder.
All of a sudden, the biggest bolt of lightning I’d ever seen seemed to strike the highway a hundred or so yards in front of us, and lit the entire world up with the brightest white light we’ve ever seen. It looked like someone had taken a flood light and shined it right in our faces. It only last a few seconds, but it was paralyzing—I think we both covered our eyes! And then, the loudest crack of thunder—as if the world split in half. Neither one of us could speak for a few seconds, and then we weren’t sure if we could laugh or not yet, in case something like it happened again. For a few minutes, every time a little lightning flashed, I could still see the impression of that enormous bolt, like the flash of a camera that continues to echo behind your eyelids when you blink.
I finally said to Bobby, “I honestly thought that lightning hit us.”
He said to me, “I thought we were dead. I thought we saw the light they always talk about.”
Our biggest challenge on this road trip has been the fight against the elements. It is amazing that in our daily lives we have set ourselves up so comfortable that weather doesn’t really harm us other than making us late for work, occasionally. You don’t realize just how powerful something like weather is until you a rolling down the road in a mobile home and lightning is trying to make contact with your GPS signal.
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