When Lightning Lashed the Ground

A reflection on the storms of Texas Hill Country

At first, only the faintest stirrings, like a newborn’s murmurs before waking. The live oaks aligned along the trail swayed ever so slightly, their slender bodies rocking as in a mother’s gentle embrace. The horses flicked their ears, as if picking up some distant whisper only they could hear.

In the endless blue sky, pale smudges gathered, as formless as spilled ink blots. But they gained weight, darkening into the furrowed lines of an old woman’s brow, frowning over the western hills.

An earthy scent drifted through on the breeze, at first so faint I could barely detect it. But soon the horses tensed, nostrils flaring wide at that rich aroma, reminding me of a garden awoken by summer rain, and the fresh promise borne from the soil itself.

Shadows crept outward as that slate blanket crept higher across the sky. Bright wildflowers faded like crimson blush, leaving an elderly cheek. Greens of the pines took on a somber hue as they drew into themselves.

Wind picked up its beckoning gestures, coaxing boughs into wider arcs. Responding, slender pine bodies swayed to that growing insistence, reeds bending before an invisible hand.

Something prophetic charged the air, crackling with primal energies like the old fortune teller’s room before her pronouncements. The horses rolled wide eyes, feeling those first heavy drops smack the thirsty earth around us. A tang, ozone-laced, raised visions of thunderheads rearing up, great anvils awaiting the sky’s hammers.

Then it broke upon us in a crescendo of unbridled power. The thunder’s growling rumble echoed across that valley like the roars of angry patriarchs scorning the heavens. Sheets of rain enveloped us in their relentless deluge, broken only by lightning’s fork tongues lashing the ground, sizzling primal secrets that the ancient earth alone understood and hoarded in its depths.

As swiftly as it raged, the tempest spent itself with one last grumbling peal fading into the western horizon. Rain beaded on the horses’ coats like shamanistic tattoos as the stinging lashes ceased. The battering curtains yielded to a rejuvenating sprinkle.

Emerging from nature’s scouring, we surveyed the transformed landscape: foliage glistening, earth aromatic, the world refreshed by that primal rite of renewal.

In the valley’s hushed revival, I sensed the ancient cycles turning once more — genesis born from ruination, the continuum ever spiraling onward. For an eternal moment, the veil parted, revealing existence’s perpetual sacred dance.