She hears the thunder in the distance, looks out the window to the north, and the sky has darkened, with distant flashes of lightning.  It’s not raining yet, but she walks out onto her protected deck—hair blowing from gentle wisps of wind teasing her long hair as if to provide a harbinger of things to come. Her eyes are scanning the panorama that displays an ominous and powerful force of nature coming her way, but she feels an unusual combination of peace as well as exhilaration inside her soul, and each crack of lightning in the distance.

Quickly, she runs into the kitchen and opens a bottle of smooth Pinot Noir, sniffs the fragrant cork, pours herself a glass, grabs a blanket and the novel she hasn’t finished —Blue Shadows, and makes her little thunderstorm nest on the deck, against the protected corner wall.  She’s wearing jean shorts, a comfortable white tank top and of course, remains barefoot. The blanket she drapes over her smooth legs, because she knows the chill is coming, thankfully. The music she has selected to serenade her during the storm is wide-ranging, including a continuous variety of radio selections of Sinatra, Bobby Darin, Zach Brown, Darius Rucker, The Eagles and low and behold, Riders on the Storm by the doors starts playing…

The book mark is right where she left off, and she remembers something romantic is about to happen at the Broadmoor, so she dives in and reads voraciously, inspired by the storm that is coming her way. She occasionally looks up, out at the branches that are starting to sway back and forth in the woods in front of her, and the dividing line between blue sky and darkness has been erased as the storm takes over.  She feels protected as the rains come, and the thunder continues, with lightning closer now, and she now turns the pages even quicker, and feels engulfed in the story and the storm that inspires her, and she won’t put the book down, as if she is in a race to finish it during the storm.

She intermittently takes a sip of her Pinot, swirls it around her grateful tongue, and stares out in the distance, feeling the power and the majesty of nature.  Occasionally, she feels a delicate mist of rain water on her face, but she stays in her soft chair, as if she is seat-belted in.  The goose-pimples happily frolic up a line drawn from her calves, up her partially exposed thighs, then behind, tickling her spine and she smiles, adjusting her blanket and allowing the wine to warm her body and release her mind-travel flight to the distant places and feelings the author allows her the freedom to feel.

After an hour, she has devoured two fast-paced chapters, and the storm is ending, but her gaze is back in the sky, and blue sky is now taking over, led by its’ brilliant giver of life.  She then jumps up quickly, looking out to the west and she found what she was waiting for:  Bright rainbows slicing the blue sky in bright colored arcs, and then, there were two!  She snapped a picture, then looked out across the canyon, and saw a neighbor man, also looking across his deck at the rainbow.  Although distant, their eyes met and she saw he had a glass of wine, so they waved at each other, pointed at the rainbow, and toasted each other with their wine glasses, now refreshed with the sweet ozone smell of a thunderstorm now gone, and a connection neither one of them thought they had.

Then she prayed: “Thank you God, for my blessings and health, and for showing me that despite the bleak and false darkness in the world, there is always light and hope.  And oh yeah, thanks for showing me that guy who likes storms too.”

© SRCarson Publications 2025