The weather on the Eastern Shore of Maryland this week has been one of warm weather with the threat of storms every day. All day today, in fact, the skies have looked menacing. So far though nothing-which is good. Earlier this week we had storms early in the morning. Being a heavy sleeper and working a part time job on the night shift I slept right through them. However, I was treated to a spectacular display of lighting from the safety and comfort of my living room late after work Wednesday night. As I was leaving work I noticed flashes in the sky but thought they were from the local airport’s rotating beacon. But as I turned the corner to my neighborhood and the sky illuminated away from the airport I realized a storm was on it’s way. Where I live between many rivers we sometimes get storms but many times they seem to follow the track of the Chesapeake Bay instead so those towns and cities get the brunt of the lighting and rain. I got inside my apartment, settled in to watch a little tv before bed and was instead treated to a surprisingly quiet but blinding lighting storm. The lighting would come down in single bolts and hit the pond or river outside my window-wherever it was it was close! There was not any loud thunder to accompany it. I was ready as it was so close. For over an hour and a half I watched the lighting hit in what looked like the same place. Always single bolts. Then as the storm started to blow away and die down the lighting changed and went from cloud to ground to cloud to cloud and changed to forked lighting streaking across the sky. How I wished I could have photographed it! It was beautiful, frighting and amazing all at once.

I am in awe of the force of nature. Be it the goslings hatching out front by the pond or the bluebirds in their birdhouses to the fawns born to the deer, to the trees, flowers and grasses growing from seed to the amazing weather that occurs in all four seasons. It all inspires me and reminds me to always march on and always learn.