Hail, Courtney

We'd just survived a hailstorm, complete with thunder and lightning, in Oceanside, Oregon. Courtney and I had gone to a state park with Satchel and Maji when the clouds opened up. Out of the car for about two minutes, a flash of lightning cracked and the thunder was right on us. We started running back up the path toward the parking lot. I turned around and saw Courtney plugging along unable to keep pace. She was weighted down by the future -- our baby.

I stopped, waited then walked with her up the hill to the car. Hail beaned off the hood like buckshot. We'd been through enough storms by now, but still there's a certain queasiness to being caught in thunder and lightning surrounded by trees. It reminded me of a trip we took a decade ago to Newport Beach in upper Wisconsin, along Lake Michigan. That day, the storm didn't just sweep in and out but planted itself on top of the lake, washing out our planned camping trip.

The hike from the lot to the lake was a two-mile trek through dense forest. We'd packed in and set up camp before we decided that if we hung around too long we might wind up dead. It had been raining the entire time, but we figured we'd simply settle in for a wet night of camping. Then the lightning started. A year earlier we'd camped at the same spot and had one of those blissful experiences where you swear you are the last two people alive, or the first for that matter -- an Adam and Eve feeling where it's just you, your lover, the garden and the oversoul that created it all. Our second trip, however, soon became a twelve-hour car ride sandwiched around a boggy hike and an electrical storm.

Soaked, we ran the last 50 yards through the woods with our bags stuck to our backs. Courtney was fast and nimble, clipping along the underbrush like a fawn. When we reached the car we stuffed our gear in the trunk, climbed in the front seats, stripped, patted down and dressed in dry clothes pulled from an old duffle bag, things we hadn't worn since college -- our "hippie" stuff complete with rips, tears and frays.

I remember thinking, even as we were dressing, about wanting to write about the experience, to talk about the changes we were going through, the new faces we were adopting during the early hours of our "professional" days. Thinking back now, I'm sure I went home and scratched something in a journal then stashed it away.

Now, fresh from our most recent encounter with lightning and wilderness, I find myself wondering exactly what it is we're completing in this life. I feel we're both living through a shared lifetime we've never experienced in other lifetimes. And the arrival of this new person -- that tiny life growing inside of Courtney -- is a part of this newness. In one regard, the baby is a culmination. In another, a beginning.

Walking with Courtney up the hill in the hail, I realized -- her hand heavy, her pace a yard behind mine -- that I wasn't exactly dragging her along, but I was definitely helping her. In that awareness I knew that if lightning were to strike her, I'd much rather be holding her hand than otherwise. If the surge was going to go through one of us, I'd want it to go through us both.

We sat for a while in the car and watched the hail, listened as the thunder got farther away. Courtney was panting, laughing and flashing the same smile she flashed that day in Newport, the one that says, "Holy shit, that was close. Now let's drive."

Happy birthday, Baby.