Here’s an extraordinary experience.

I wanted to think about a particular issue that was perplexing me. So I set off to walk the five miles or so to the small Midwestern town near where I was staying. Just the act of walking slows a person down to a more appropriate speed for clear thinking and we tend to move so fast it has to be conscious decision to slow down.

It was hot, or as they call it here, ‘toasty’. At Wallgreens drive thru pharmacy it was showing 98f on the digital sign. I planned a walk back along the Illinois and Michigan canal to be closer to nature and surrounded by the trees and vegetation. I had my broad brimmed hat and sunglasses so the sun and the temperature were fine, I’ve trekked across the Sinai Desert in temperatures exceeding 50c so this was manageable.

In Liberty Street I ate a Ceasar salad for lunch and set my thoughts down in a notepad. I am a great believer in the idea of all Creation as a matrix of reference and learning; I see the natural worlds as the most unbiased mirror in which to seek reflection. During my contemplations I asked the Universe for a sign to indicate that the way I was dealing with this particular issue was the best way.

I walked and communed with nature; turtles, eagles, scarlet coloured cardinal birds, bright yellow finches, coupling dragonflies and virdent green everywhere. I was making along the road through the fields when the sky went black and started to roll angrily like a dynamo above me. Instinctively I thought, “this isn’t good, I don’t want to be out in the open here.”

Off to the left of me, some distance away, bolts of lightning started to hit the ground. Then I noticed what I initially thought was a cloud of dust in front of some buildings. I went to take a picture of it and then it suddenly got icy cold and I was hit by a blast of air just as if I’d opened a freezer and the air inside came rocketing out. I realized that the cloud of dust was actually rotating and starting to spin. It didn’t form a funnel completely, it was quite wide but then I realized it was moving and moving rapidly straight toward me.

I looked around for shelter but the nearest thing was a barn and I didn’t want to make a run for it because I just knew I couldn’t outrun it and I remembered hearing that a building is not the best place to be in in this situation. I had moved to the edge of the field for a better view. There was a ditch at the other side of the road so I decided to jump in it and keep my head down. At that moment I started getting pelted with gravel and small bits of flotsam, then I was being pushed hard and was lifted off my feet and thrown across the road, I somehow managed to manouvre myself and half dive, half scramble into the ditch. I put my head above the parapet to see what was coming and a huge blast of force passed straight over my head and ripped the roof off the barn that I’d thought about sheltering in.

The grass and trees all started whipping up in a frenzy of erratic movement and then bolts of lightning started landing nearby. As soon as I felt the worst had passed I climbed out and made for a friend’s house. The sky got blacker and started rolling menacingly directly above me and I thought I was going to get sucked up into it there and then. I actually reasoned, “I don’t want to go yet, but if this is my time, so be it.” I just kept walking, the land here is completely flat and exposed, the former Great Plains, and thought, “please don’t get struck by lightning, I don’t mind being soaked to the skin but not a bolt of lightning.”

Then a pick up truck pulled up. It was the farmer whose barn had just had its roof taken off. He said he’d seen me walking by and that it was no time or place to be out in the open. He gave me a lift to my friend’s house which was all boarded up with him and the kids sheltering in the basement. The side door to the garage was open, so I let myself in.

The storm came in and raged, cleared and then as if for a grand finale there were spectacular elctrical storms lighting the sky with vertical and horizontal lightning throughout the night.

I asked the Universe a question and that was the answer it gave.