Some of my contemporaries chose analysis and psychotherapy—I chose jet skiing. On one of those afternoons, Anne knew that I wanted to go jet skiing with her husband when I called and asked if Markie could come out and play. She groaned and pretended to protest, knowing fully well that if I took Mark away, she would have the house to herself for the rest of the day. We met at Blacktail and soon we were in the water. Mark brought his son, Blake, and we performed the "jetski ritual" while standing in a circle knee-deep in the water. We looked up to the heavens, extended our arms over our heads, and proclaimed, “And the heavens parted ….” Looking back down at the water, we did a sweeping Vanna White gesture and said, “and the waters calmed ….” As we fell back into the water we pronounced with a crescendo, “and the Lord said, ‘Let there be jet skiing!’” That irreverent, totally absurd ritual launched some of the finest afternoons of my life. Several hours of riding jetskis brought pleasant distraction to that hot, still afternoon. We returned to the picnic area to rest and noticed that thunderhead clouds had accumulated over hills southeast of Blacktail and were rapidly covering the clear sky. It soon became an encircling summer thunderstorm, whipping the peaceful bay into raging whitecaps. Frightened boaters raced to the launch ramp, thinking that somehow they could all get out at once. Not so. Some made it out, others found themselves in the pandemonium that nearly always occurs when summer storms turn boat ramps into a melee of panic. You just can’t buy entertainment like that. Maybe we weren’t the brightest bulbs in the pack, but we did choose not to fight for space on the crowded ramp in a raging storm. We just held our place, patiently sitting in the water. We were next to the shoreline with front row seats to the best show in town. After the gale force front passed by, things calmed down. The slowly circling clouds, rain, hail, and lightning seemed to have parked directly over the lake. As we watched we realized that the lightning strikes were moving in a counter-clockwise direction and seemed to hit the shoreline every few minutes. We were in the direct path of lightning as it circled toward us, and we were the only vertical lightning conductors for several hundred yards in either direction. We thought it best to sit ourselves down in the water, next to our jet skis filled with gas. When the rain intensified and the hail began, we removed our personal flotation devices (PFD’s), covered our heads, and scrunched down as low as possible. Staring out at the raging storm through brightly colored bonnets of foam and woven nylon straps, we had an incomparable water-level perspective through the armholes in our PFD’s. Under similar circumstances, normal people would be terrified and complain miserably — but not us. We broke down into hysterical laughter when someone opined that we probably looked like a bunch of loonies, sitting there barely above the water, protecting ourselves by wearing what looked like brightly colored ladies' underwear on our heads.
Lightning strikes circled back on us three times. Some seemed to be quite close with a simultaneous flash and a loud clap of thunder. We smelled ozone and agreed that it had been a wise move to go from standing on the shoreline to hunkering down in the water. The storm gradually worked its way towards the dam and over the grain fields near Ririe. Within twenty minutes the deep rumbling and dark clouds moved away into the distance and the sun started to peek through. As the boat ramp became less congested, we discussed the options. We could load up, go home, and find out what our wives wanted us to do — or we could just sit there in the water, enjoying the calm, after the storm. We chose wisely and sat there, marinating in our wetsuits in the water for quite a while, grateful not to have been vaporized. Last week, I went to lunch with Mark and Blake. Maybe we need to get out more, but the way we saw it, that July afternoon was one of the best times of our lives.
Ever vigilant,
RT
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