Dantes View, Summer #2

I don't miss the scorpions so much. Or the rattlesnakes, bless them. But I do miss the vastness. And the clarity. And especially the silence.

I miss enormous and violent thunderstorms only requiring a small slice of the panorama. Lightning and thunder over here. But sunny and beautiful over there, and over there. Being able to see for 50, or 100 miles as clearly as if it were 50, or 100 feet. The smell of wet cheatgrass. The morning wind. The afternoon heat mirages.

Did you ever take refuge from a ridge line as a thunderstorm regally marched up the valley and finally passed over you? Then watched in amazement as the sheetwash over the desert varnish turned the dry creek bed next to you into a raging flood? In only fifteen minutes?

Ever stare as hard as you could at the lightning strikes, trying to visually pinpoint and remember exactly where they hit? Then after the storm passed hike over and try to find petrified lightning? The fulgurites?

Nice photographs...