When gasoline started getting expensive in the mid-Aughts, I stopped dragging my trailer to the Northwest in the summer. Would I really be able to stay cool in the Southwest in the summer?
Soon after praising my high-mesa campsite near Santa Fe, we were hit by a violent thunderstorm. I should have realized the edge of a mesa is a vulnerable location. We abandoned the trailer and went to the van, thinking that it was electrically grounded better. At least it didn't have any propane tanks. If we had been in the trailer, the little dog would have been hiding behind the Thetford toilet. In the van, he just sat on my lap and quivered. I can't help believing that the standard theories about the domestication of wolves are wrong, and that it was thunderstorms that drove the Wolf to Man and the cave.
New Mexico is having an unusually wet and stormy early-summer. Normally it's oppressively cloudless, and so arid that it sucks the spit right out of your mouth. Finger tips and heels crack and bleed. But this summer the moisture and clouds have been marvelous. Still, this experience taught me that the local deity, the mighty Thunderbird, is not to be trifled with. A little homework revealed:
Why didn't somebody warn me?!"In the United States the areas of maximum thunderstorm activity are the Florida peninsula (more than 90 thunderstorm days per year), the Gulf Coast (70–80 days per year), and the mountains of New Mexico (50–60 days per year)."
["thunderstorm."Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD 15 June 2007 .]
Comments