A jarring crash woke me from a dead sleep. Dead because it was 2 a.m., and dead because I’ve been in full scale combat with some local bug that is wreaking havoc on my system.

I grabbed my trusty headlamp from my nightstand and headed toward the origin of the noise. In retrospect I don’t  know what I was thinking. How I got from hearing a violent crash – to running TOWARDS it is a mystery. At any rate, armed with my headlamp I bolted out onto the landing.

Again, a violent crash. This time, followed by a howling wind.

I crept down the first three stairs onto a short landing and peered over a railing.  The fragile front doors of the guest house were heaving inward with each new assault by the wind. I turned quickly and headed back to  bed,  afraid that the glass doors might give way sending shattered glass flying into the foyer.

Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, I have always found storms comforting. This, however, was a completely different kind of storm. Shortly after the wind hit, flashes of light illuminated my room. It took about 15 minutes for the thunder to catch up to the streaks of lightening.

Once the lightening strike and thunder finally aligned the concussive slap of thunder tore across the silent land. Then a remarkable thing happened, the sound just kept on going. Having no nearby hills or mountains to absorb it, the thunder rolled over the sleeping plain like a ripple until it finally wore itself out somewhere far off in the distance.

I have watched ripples on a silent pond grow and travel until they tire, but until now I have never heard them. I lay awake for a while just listening to the ripple of the thunder, deep and raging, rolling on into a silent afterthought.