Get Forked

I love rain. When I’m caught in a torrential downpour, I feel so alive. I love it when the heavens open and just let rip. Thunderstorms, the perfect combination of falling rain and deadly electrical forks are beautiful and thrilling. I never quite feel so lucky as when the hair stands up on my arms and I walk through the warm rain with flashes in the sky and deafening crashes of thunder watching the drama of nature unfold all around me. I love the smell in the air, the charge in the atmosphere, the fear in people’s eyes as they all scurry home to their brick boxes where they feel safe and protected. I love not being one of the scurriers, but one who flings her arms out with the sheer joy of it all, dances through puddles and opens my mouth to drink the heavy metallic tasting rain. I get scared, more so than in any horror movie but I somehow love feeling that I could die at any moment, that I am dicing with death. Yes, of course I am reassured by the odds of the situation, but still we’ve all seen the tree split down the middle, we’ve all heard the rumours of the kid who never made it home.

To me a walk in the thunder encapsulates both the sheer miracle of life as well as it’s transient nature; it makes me realise that I am not in charge here, that there are greater forces of work. I understand why humans have always given their head gods the thunderbolts. To see a fork of lightening, and be physically shaken by the many deafening claps of energy is both terrifying and exhilarating. You realise how tiny and fragile your body is, how at the mercy of chance you are every day you are alive. It makes you ask those kind of questions, the wondrous questions that you will probably never answer but are shaped in fascinating and beautiful ways simply by asking. To me, a walk in a thunderstorm is the spiritual equivalent of drinking ten cans of red bull, I come home from one of my long strolls feeling like I am bursting out of my own skin, like I have connected with the essence of energy itself. So, if there is one thing I would recommend for you to do this summer, especially if you have not done it before, go and walk in one of the steaming summer thunderstorms. Go alone, and take your time, but not an umbrella. Sing. Shout. Get somewhere quiet. Go out to nature. If possible, walk near water. There is nothing more spectacular than watching the lightening reflect in the lapping waves of a lake or river. Take my advice; get truly and properly forked up this summer. You will not regret it.