Midian Ranch Blog

This is the web log for Midian Ranch, an isolated homestead in rural Nevada. It is owned by Jason and Tina Walters, whom are also its regular posters. This blog is exclusively for the enlightenment and edification of our friends, family, and colleagues.

My Photo
Name:
Location: Gerlach, Nevada, United States

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Lightening Storm

Living in the desert makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do. Stupid things. Crazy things. After a while you come to understand that the stereotype of the “crazy old desert rat” you see on television and in movies isn’t really a stereotype at all. It’s real.

It’s you.

Take that lightening storm last month.

Now, a normal person sees the black clouds, hears the thunder, and thinks to him or herself “Hum; there’s a storm coming. Probably lightening too. I should go inside.” But let’s say you’re a desert rat. You live without air conditioning. It’s 100-degrees in the shade by nine in the morning. You haven’t felt rain on your skin in over two months. In fact, you’re having a hard time remembering what it’s like to see liquid stuff fall from the sky. So when the heavens turn black and raindrops begin to strike the roof of your crude porch like a thousand tiny Brigham Young’s coming to take you away to mythical Deseret, it doesn’t occur to you to go inside. No. You pull your shirt off, scream “Hell Yes,” and run out into the storm whooping and hollering with your two stupid dogs at your heels. Delicious wet coldness beats against your skin like something out of a half-remembered dream. Glorious!

You make it half way across your ranch before lightening starts striking the hills around you, causing the hair on your arms to stand on end. Both you and the dogs start running in earnest, because all three of you know what’s coming. You’re the tallest things in the valley: a pack of de-facto idiot organic lightning rods. You’ve got to get under cover or die. So you run to the nearest building and duck inside. Smart, except that it’s a 100% metal building, and your hair begins standing on end again. So you run back out into the storm again and make for your ranch house - which is conveniently not made out of metal alloy – hoping that God really does love fools like the Koran says. Or at least that he loves dogs.

These are the sorts of crazy things that cross your mind when you’re making a mad dash for your house in a lightening storm. Or possibly just mine.