Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer's Search for Wonder in the Natural World by Leigh Ann Henion Page B

lightning. But it’s just the distance—the viewers’ perspective—that makes it seem silent. Somewhere, the sky is screaming as air molecules are ripped apart by extreme heat.
    A bolt—vivid and unshrouded—suddenly appears directly before us and shoots nearly straight to the ground, where it seems to hold for a very long time, a solid column of plasma. Lightning bolts are typically less than a half inch in diameter, but these appear as wide as the Mississippi River.
    “
¡Qué bueno! ¡Qué bueno!
” Romo shouts, suddenly serious.
    A rooster crows from somewhere in the village, and the lightning does make the night appear a faux sort of dawn, orange and yellow light illuminating the sky with forceful regularity. They expose the atmosphere—red toward the bottom where pollutants allow only red spectrum light to pass, and a phosphorescent blue toward the top, where the air is cleaner. The crown of the strike looks like pure fire, a butane flame.
    A rush of wind blows across the island and Alan says, “That’s good. It’s growing. Come on!”
    There are two storms in front of us. Three now. They’re getting stronger.
    The wind picks up and the cloud-to-ground strikes become cloud-to-cloud. When a bolt of lightning flashes across the sky, filling the entire palette of night, we all cry out. The phenomenon shoots across the sky, forking in four different directions like a mapped nervous system.
    “Bravo!” Romo screams. “Bravo!”
    I’m so exhausted, I feel nearly nauseous with fatigue. What’s more, each time I turn to go into the house to get a long-sleeved shirt to prevent malarial mosquito bites, the lightning flashes even bolder than before. I turn, it shouts. It’s almost as if it’s tapping me on the shoulder, saying: The show isn’t over.
    Matt offers to go in my stead—out of kindness more than concern about tropical diseases—but I urge him to stay. There’s too much to see here. And—unlike everything in our regular schedule at home, which allows only brief contact when passing the domestic baton—we’re going to see it together.
    “All that concentrated energy!” Alan shouts.
    “
¡Mira!
Look!” Romo shrieks.
    The sky is a labyrinth of light that’s shooting north, south, east, west, but its structure is so complex it’s impossible to see where it begins or ends.
    I close my eyes as I stand on the stilt-house porch. The air smells of swampy earth. I can hear the water lapping at the island’s ragged shores and the stilt-house’s cement pilings like the hull of a boat. My senses feel attuned. I’m living three-dimensionally. This, I realize, is what I’d been missing in those early days of Archer’s life. It had been so cold outside and I’d had a fragile infant. I’d been suddenly thrown into the visceral cycle of life and death in labor, but as a nervous new mother, I was rarely going outdoors.
    I was more connected to the cycle of life than ever before, but I’d never been more isolated from its larger stage. The hunger I’ve had—the deep-seated one that I’ve been denying because of my who-am-I-to-ask-for-more outlook and my fear of being judged a kook for talking about spirituality—extends even beyond that, I think. In my childhood, I spent countless hours exploring nature—collecting wild mushrooms, sifting slick pebbles from streams. I spend much more time mining the Internet now. I have allowed myself to fall too far from grand shows of beauty.
    But I am here now. Right here. Right now.
    I open my eyes again. I watch the light of a hidden strike rise in the sky, cloud-to-cloud, spirits rising. The earth feels oddly charged with meaning, and truth and mythology seem to blur as in magical realism. The voices of ancestors crowd around us, crackling and cackling in what locals sometimes refer to as “rivers of fire.”
    Flames fork overhead, in what scientists call spider lightning. They web the stars, like a game of connect-the-dots. Then, I see a strike zigzag