Fifteen years later, high on a broad expanse of steep snow on a northside route of Washington state's Mount Rainier, my ears buzzed with a sound that reminded me of a radio stuck between channels. With a turn of my head, the sound hummed at a new frequency. I turned my head back and forth - eeeoooeeeooo! I grinned at the thought of my knob failing to find a channel, and kept climbing. Into danger? Unknown.


Yesterday, on a mountain-bike descent of a dilapidated trail north of Durango, I stopped to call my wife on my cell phone, to give her an idea of when to expect me home. My 5-year-old daughter got on. Across the valley, lightning struck a slope at my elevation. Dazzling. And the storm clouds were heading my way. Knowing that the average lightning strike travels six miles, I felt the danger. "I gotta go, sweetie - lightning!" Upon reaching safety, I explained myself to her. "Oh, Daddy," she said, "you be careful!" In the strike zone of lightning countless times, I've learned that careful is not a science. With lightning, you just never know. Careful helps, but often enough we're caught so exposed that we survive the risk of a lightning strike by what's gotta be empyreal charity. Call it luck. "I will, don't you worry!" I said to my child. "I'm coming home."


Dean Cox made it home too, barely, but with holes burned in his clothes and his nerves fried. Like many of us, Cox is in love with the outdoors, especially alpine, a love that puts him at risk in our mountains where summer's afternoon storms are the norm. A survivor of a lightning strike, even now Cox is not going to let lightning keep him from his adventures in the San Juan Mountains. Not now, not ever. He got caught in the open, lightning striking him through and through. Here's his story ("Electrified," pg. 30), a story that he can tell but many of us can feel. We've been there, close enough.