Only Fools Dance in Lightning Storms
Boulder Scramble to Flat Iron in the Superstitions
Century Plant
When I was a girl growing up in Minnesota, the day wasn't officially over until my parents watched the 10:00 news. And not just a few minutes of the news either, but ... all the way ... to the end ... when the weatherman gave the latest updates.
In Minnesota the weather is a Big Deal, because what is happening up in the sky with clouds and sun and rain and atmospheric pressure changes multiple times a day and in a farming community, weather ... or lack of it ... means money in the pocket and food on the table.
Not so in the desert.
When we first moved here several decades ago, I stayed up like a good Minnesotan to watch the evening news. Much to my surprise, the weather report wasn't at the end, but barely made air time. The 5-day forecast of sun and more sun was squashed between sports highlights of the Phoenix Suns. Apparently non-ending hot weather wasn't newsworthy.
However, on a rare occurrence of moisture, the Arizonan weather meteorologist was given prime booking as he stood outside in his raincoat with the cameraman zoomed close to catch scattered drops hitting shallow puddles. Mocking the Arizona weatherman, on such days, is a family pastime.
Last February, on an overnight camp-out to the Superstitions, I would have done well to have left my mockery in a box under the bed and grabbed my raincoat instead.
The afternoon had begun innocently enough. We had woven our way through a carpeted meadow of yellow brittlebush, sprinkled with orange globe mallow and trumpeting red chuparosa blossoms. We had continued southeast up the Siphon Draw Trail, passing Thumb Rock and Crying Dinosaur Rock, resisting the urge to stop for photos, our eyes on the clouds above the Superstition Mountains.
The clouds were low and gray. Rain clouds.
"You're hiking without a tent?!" a friend had exclaimed when I called to tell her of our Friday evening plans of spending the night on the top of the Superstition Mountains.
"We live in the desert. It's not monsoon season," I said, figuring we'd be nice and dry.
Now, half-way up the mountain, I wasn't so sure. I thought of our raincoats still stashed in the camping gear at home, as we boulder-scrambled up the sorry-excuse for a trail. Several times I took off my pack and lifted it above my head to push the pack through a narrow spot.
Circumnavigating a scree field, we encountered a border of century plants -- blue green agaves about three feet in diameter -- with razor blades for leaves.
The guidebook had warned about several tricky places on the trail. "Look for a painted white arrow telling you to climb up and turn left around a large boulder. If you turn right here, you end up on a slope of loose scree. It is possible to get to the top that way, but it's fairly miserable." *
We had turned right when we should have gone left. We had arrived at Fairly Miserable.
Boulders. Non-existent trail. Loose scree. Blood dripping from an agave slice. I figured it couldn't get much more miserable than this.
I figured wrong, because right then, the heavens let loose with soaking rain.
Thankful we were not at the exposed summit, my husband pulled a small tarp from his pack. We hunkered low in a collection of boulders, scrunching ourselves into tiny balls as the sky skittered with thunder and lightening. We counted the seconds between flashes and echoes.One. Two. Three. Four.
"The voice of the Lord strikes with flashes of lightning," says Psalm 29:7. God had our attention.
We watched and listened as his voice zig-zagged across the desert sky. I remembered years ago when we had guided a trip in the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota, A lightning storm caught us in the middle of a lake -- our exposed canoe the highest target for miles around. Feeling like scrambled eggs in an aluminum fry pan, we paddled like those possessed, heading for the nearest shore. One hundred yards out, a tall pine tree on shore exploded in front of us, its large branches igniting like a bundle of dry kindling under the force of the lightning's power.
Only fools dance in lightning storms.
"He loads the clouds with moisture," the book of Job says in chapter 37:11 -12. "He scatters his lightning through them. At his direction they swirl around over the face of the whole earth to do whatever he commands them."
When we first came to Arizona to work as youth pastors, we took a group of teenagers to a retreat in California. One young man, struggling with his faith, went walking around the grounds one evening in a rain storm.
"God," he prayed with his eyes toward heaven, "show me you are real."
The words had barely left his lips when a bolt of lightning torched a palm tree near him.
He immediately fell to his knees, with arms raised, declaring, "I believe. I believe."
I would like to report that this young man continued in his walk of faith, but he, like so many of us, returned to the business of living life with the illusion he was once again in control.
A personal lightning bolt from heaven was not enough for him, but to be perfectly honest, sometimes personal God messages are easily forgotten by me, also, especially in a culture that serves up a manageable, Jesus-is-my-buddy, Gospel.
The Bible talks about Jesus calling us His friends (John 15:15), but if that is the only side of God we have explored, we will find ourselves in trouble with our faith when the God who tosses around lightning bolts shows up. God as a buddy doesn't stir obedience or sacrifice in anyone. A god this small can be found while sitting safely in the parking lot, with the doors locked.
My God plays with lightning bolts. The wind obeys His voice, and the stars sing His name. He is not manageable. He is not tame-able. He is mystery. He is wild. He is beyond time or space.
And there, under a tarp on the Superstition Mountains I am confronted with the dual reality of God's sovereignty and of God's goodness. Of God's knowable love and His mysterious wonder. Of God's unfathomable raw power and of His kindness.
Only fools dance in lightning storms, but the wise would be careful to remember the lessons that are learned there.
* 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: Phoenix by Charles Liu. Page 191.