Fire and Thunder in the Rain 🔥⚡️🌧
a tale, leeches, hail, privileged woes, a question, a lesson
Can You Make Fire in the Rain?
In July, a group of ten guys and I did a trekking trip through the Flat Tops Wilderness of Colorado.
We learned survival and navigational skills like water filtration💧, topography🗺, and coordinate shooting1 🧭
But why go?
Why, in a world of ubiquitous technological navigation and internet, learn these skills?
Why not just go glamping instead?
I’ll tell you.
When we arrived at Muskrat Lake,
It was the second day of the trip. The afternoon was bright and clear and deceptively cool in the way that only elevation air is capable.
Tall aspens, wildflowers, a flowing lake. After setting up camp in a tall grassy meadow, we set off for what the leader called “functional training.”
Nose stinging with wildflowers and pine needles. Birds and light wind.
“Muskrat Lake” a veritable paradise?
—Should have known better.
The first warning came echoing through the high-grassy corridor leading to the lake. From the howling lips of the biggest, funniest guy on the trip. “Dutch Oven Dallas.”
For the sake of cleanliness, I’ll shorten to one word the filth that next resounded through camp. One word which encapsulates all you need to know about the muddy maw of muck that is Muskrat Lake.
“LEECHES”
is how fast a crystal blue sky can go dark. Fast as a single cloud crossing before the sun.
It was just when Dallas made his leechy discovery, that the first beads of rain began to fall.
We had spent the afternoon trekking five golden miles through what seemed like an infinitude of highland meadows. Meadows rimmed by the blue capes of the surrounding mountains, the occasional yipping marmot.
But in the time it takes you to tie a boot, brother sun had been blotted out. Leeched of light. Replaced by polar darkness.
Beneath a stand of evergreen we stood, watching those beads of rain grow in size and splash loud on the canvas of our tents like marbles on hardwood.
But we were at 10,000 feet, and the heat of day was turning. Those globs of water began to freeze and became hard polyps of ice.
Hail.
Plagued by ice tumbling with abandon from a faultless gray sky, we waited. Read. Groaned2.
Hail slammed into the swamp-green darkness of our campground. Leapt off pitchtent nylon-like pearls falling on asphalt from a shorn necklace.
"Boys," called out Tom Bombadill3, the trip's leader.
“Really?,” I sighed, “Dry wood in a storm?”
We were in for a brutalizing wet, cold night.
That was the point I started to question why I’d come.
A few days earlier I’d been holed up on a warm couch, in good company, with a dog and a plate of sushi. I thought back to those simple comforts and dwelled. Dwelled on the wrong questions:
What’s the point of a compass when there’s Google Maps?
Who benefits from frostbitten toes and fingers?
Why subject myself to this?
Yet, as is so often the case, an answer rose from the ashes.
An answer with value so much greater than anything I could have read in a book or learned from a video while curled up on a couch.
How to Make Fire in the Rain
These men were far more industrious than I.
Alone, I would have given up, would have crawled into a drenched tent with a long spoon and jar of peanut butter to sulk and wait for morning. Alone, I would have given up when the first sparks sputtered and collapsed in on themselves.
Would have but didn’t, because of them.
They knew where and how to find wood dry enough, knew the right place to build the fire pit, and knew most importantly that the most opportune moment for light-heartedness and fun isn’t when everything flows smoothly, but when nothing seems to work.
The hail was turning back to rain. A mountain moon ascended up over the edge of the misty world like a dying gaslight. Like a blind man’s eye.
Bombadill’s call for dry wood had half the crew in action.4
Cobbled ice crunched underfoot as we charged through the forest, turning over logs, breaking large or weak timber open, hoping to find their insides dry.
After an hour or so of work the first fiery sparks, in all their glory, began their war with the rain.
In the dark of the woods at ten thousand feet, there’s nothing quite like a raging fire, eating a freeze dried mountain house or sharing stories.
Even though we were soaked to the bone, freezing, ambling through the mud and muck in the night, huddled desperately close, fanning the flames so vigorously our hands took on layers of splinters and blood and grime. Even though our water source was laden with leeches and all of our belongings were to be ten pounds heavier in the morning. Even though everything seemed to be going against us.
Despite all of it, all the struggle, all the cold and frustration and darkness, we had made fire in the rain.
And by that fire we stood, singing happy birthday to one of the guys, passing around whiskey, holding our hands over the warmth of our work.
Then, a flash.
Thunder roared from the heavens, shaking the trees, dappling the fire with water.
There was a brief pause and no one spoke, waiting to see if the fire would survive. I counted the seconds.
Then, matter of factly pointing out something so obvious yet so profound, Indiana Darnall spoke:
“Rain, fire, thunder” he said and paused.
“Dont know if I’ll ever hear that all at once again.”
More quiet.
More Jeremy philosophizing about what Indy had just said. About the profundity of what we were experiencing. Might never experience again.
And there in that matter-of-fact statement was the answer to my question.
My takeaway to the question, why go?
🧭 Sometimes beauty lives on the underbelly of the beast.
🧭 Sometimes the best moments in life follow the worst.
It’s easy to look back and reminisce about the glory of it all.
It’s hard to pause in the present and acknowledge just how singular an experience one is having. I’m reminded of a line in Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning:
Would that moment of damn-near-spiritual satisfaction have happened without the terrible rain? Without the discomfort and pain?
It doesn’t matter what level of adversity we’re charged with. What matters is what comes on the other side of it. There is no warmth in paradise without hell to heat it. No value to freedom without knowing the other side.
So next time you feel things getting prickly, next time you have that all-too-human urge to problem solve, to search for clearer skies.
Pause.
Ask the hard questions:
Why did I take on this project?
Why did I travel to this place
Why choose this path?
If the answer is for challenge or for personal growth, then maybe I shouldn’t veer off course? Maybe for my own good, for the good of how I will feel, I could endure this pain? Could respond with both grit and lightness?
Ask the hard questions
Then you’ll hear Thunder and Fire in the Rain.
That’s all amigos!
Here’s what I’ve been up to since the last post:
April-July I enrolled in and completed a Coding BootCamp
In July I began a road trip with my dog and a friend from said BootCamp
Back soon with more and thanks again for all your support, friendos <3
Ciao for now,
—JS
Yes, like with a compass.
Speaking for myself…
You would be shocked how fast a 45lb pack becomes 55lb after some rain
The others had opted to take shelter in their tents early, some skipping dinner.
Where this Blog Post was written and where we will be until late August
Vamos a ver donde quedamos…