Strikingly Beautiful

Cirque Peak, Foxtail Pine
Cottonwood Basin
Southern Sierra Nevada

Don't get me wrong. Thunder and lightning terrify me. I have sprinted like Usain Bolt through many a high altitude Sierran meadow, jettisoning my pack and water bottle and all common sense as lightning strikes around me and the air crackles with the dry, sandpapery smell of ozone. I become primal at such times and rather stupid: do I run towards that lone Foxtail Pine or away? Do I run uphill or down? Do my metal hiking poles conduct electricity? What exactly are eggs Benedict? Yet once I am safe and sound and sheltered in my tent, please let the show begin. Let me feel the earth shake beneath my Thermarest. Let me roost like a sparrow in a kettledrum.

I understand that lightning strikes planet earth 70 times every second. That's a lot of current! That's a lot of curly hair! Many people are struck by lightning; few live, and those that do can speak only in italics. What follows is the remarkable true story of a lightning strike survivor...

Luz Lapitas was a simple woman. She lived alone in the Oakland Hills with her taxidermied guinea pig. She enjoyed macrame, People Magazine and visiting wax museums. She bought slurpees at 7-11 on hot days and poured them over her head when she returned to her car. She was a knuckle-deep nosepicker, but only when she listened to NPR on her car radio. She worked in Human Resources for the animals at the Oakland Zoo and once spent an entire year settling a meerkat strike (They unionized and decided to stop acting cute until their grain supply increased by several bushels).

Everything changed for dear Luz Lapitas during the storm of November, 2005, when the barometric pressure fell, the tides went haywire and the moon waxed instead of waned. It was also the night of the time change (Spring ahead, Fall back) and the 1,000th episode of Sabado Gigante on the Spanish channel. It was the recipe for the perfect storm (as well as the recipe for bouillabaisse). Poor Luz didn't know this, however. She had watched the weather reports on the Weather Channel, but regrettably, she had watched the Weather Channel reruns which she had TiVoed from the previous Summer. While everyone else hunkered down in their basements with candles and their rosaries and extra batteries, Luz was out walking on the fire trail listening to Glen Campbell's Not So Greatest Hits on her iPod.

She didn't notice the approach of rumbling thunder, the sky becoming thick and dark, the stampede of rodents running for cover, and finally, she didn't notice the hair on her forearms standing at attention and the static-like smell in her nostrils. She was singing "Like a Rhinestone Cowboy" along with Glen and just loving life as she summited a rocky prominotory.

The bright light came quickly and caught her by surprise, like an irritating relative with a flash camera at a family gathering. She felt a searing, electrical pain enter her right ear and exit her left foot. It was similar to stepping on a hot thumbtack, just 1,000 times worse. "This is not pleasant," she thought, and for an infinite moment she felt shish-kabobbed and somehow connected rotisserie-style to both the heavens above and the magma within the earth beneath her. Her life flashed before her eyes: the operation where the doctor removed the mole from her neck, the time she tried chewing tobacco and thought she would die, the time she put the spiders in the microwave...

Then, all went white. I know that sounds strange, but for our protagonist, Luz, all certainly did go white. She heard a voice, a man's voice. "Luz," it said gently. It sounded soothing and welcoming.

"Regis, Regis Philbin?" Luz asked. She wasn't sure if she said it out loud.

"No," the voice said, "I am not Regis." He laughed as if he had heard a mildly amusing pun.

"What is required of me?" Luz asked, trying to see from where the voice came, but again, all was simple whiteness without any form.

"It is not your time," the man replied. "Luz, " he continued, "Remember, all is mystery, and all is not nothingness, but somethingness. Return from whence you came, do good works, love your enemies, seek my face, keep the thermostat set at 60 degrees when you leave the house and machine wash warm, tumble dry."

Then her mind went blank.

Some hikers found Luz on the trail in the morning. She was unconscious but breathing. Her hair was frizzy and course like a brillo pad. Her skin was diffusely blistered and tomato red. When the hikers removed the iPod from her ears, they noted that the device seemed to be stuck, and the line Riding out on a horse in a star spangled rodeo from Rhinestone Cowboy was playing over and over. Luz convalesced for several months, during which time The Oakland Tribune ran a front page story about her which uncharitably read: "Nut Survives Bolt."

Once fully recovered, Luz's life changed in many ways. Now she could fold socks correctly after laundering them. She could predict college football scores. She could communicate with turtles. At nighttime she loved reading a good book while wrapped in a blanket full of static cling. She started a used lightbulb collection. And inexplicably she loathed Glen Campbell and became vertiginous when she heard his songs. But mostly, she now enjoyed simple pleasures like a beautiful sunset, a child's face, volunteering at the soup kitchen, and, for the first time in her life, using fabric softener.

Ointment for the Rash

Mt. Langley over Cottonwood Basin

Like a shark, I was born with extra teeth. Indeed! Rootless, undeveloped cute little baby teeth rattled around in the boney spaces of my face and sinuses like barley grains. I was a walking maraca. In the dental community this condition is known as supernumerary teeth. It is a flossing nightmare. Also, it is often associated with other maladies, including loss of hair (a condition known as baldness), fear of clowns and fabric store knees (a sudden weakening of the legs upon entering fabric stores). Luckily, I suffer from only two of these related conditions, thanks be to God.

Alas, then, when I was 7 and a tender sprig, my parents brought me to an oral surgeon. His name was Dr. Gordon Rash. Honest as the day is long! I stray not from the truth. That was his name. Without surgeries, Dr. Rash told my fretting parents, the excess teeth would grow roots and mature and protrude from my nose and cheeks like burls on a tree. This would not get me dates, I realized. I would have a face only my mother could love. Without surgery I would spend my life in a dark closet. Or, I might join the circus. But then I would be around clowns all day. These were not good alternatives.

I would meet with Dr. Rash regularly over the next 10 years. Now allow me to speak candidly. Dr. Rash never exhibited the warm fuzzies. He must have missed that lecture during oral surgery school. He was as charismatic and emotionally engaging as a plate full of polenta. He seldom spoke, and he never laughed - not once, not when I joked, not when I asked if it would be ok if I spit before I swished. His baritone voice lacked all inflection; it echoed hollowly around the sterile, clangy exam room like a forlorn bassoon. He was like a milquetoast Darth Vader.

"You will require many procedures," he said. "Yes, many procedures." (He seldom used verbs or other words implying action).

That's what he called my surgeries. They were procedures: the administration of the medication which made me floaty and nauseated and disassociated, the meticulous digging with the galvanized tools as if my mouth were an archaelogical site, the taste of blood and novocaine, the gauze wrapped mummy style around my tongue, the whirring and stuttering of drills, the crunching, the bite block mercilessly propping open my jaw, the gritty vapor rising from mouth which smelled like electricity and burnt chicken, the masked face with the sunken grey eyes staring passively into my mouth, the distant voice behind the mask asking for more suction and commanding me to keep my hands still...

At one post-procedure visit I sat face to face with Dr. Rash. His cheeks were smooth and plethoric, like uncooked roast, and his jowels hung jello-like over his tight-fitting collar. He smelled like old coffee. He seemed spent, exhausted. Maybe he had disimpacted too many wisdom teeth. Maybe Mrs. Rash was angry with him and threw a plate at his head. Maybe he needed a vacation. I'm sure that was it. I told him I was going on vacation.

"Where are you going?" he asked, very much disinterested as he held my latest panoram xray and examined it in the light. I could see the extra teeth in the xray; they looked like glowing peas.

"Where am I going?" I answered. "I'm going backpacking. In the Sierras,"

He set down the xray. He stared into my eyes. I stifled a shiver. "What kind of gun will you be taking?" he asked.

"Gun?" I said, mustering an ounce of courage, "My family never takes a gun when we go backpacking."

"Well, you should," he answered.

"What for?" I asked.

He paused. "For protection. You should take a gun for protection." He placed his hand on my forearm and squeezed tightly. His hand, I noted, was white and hairless and glacially cold.

I whimpered internally and wondered if my mom could extricate herself from that article she was reading in Redbook Magazine out in the waiting room. I tried to communicate with her telepathically:

"Uh, Mom, a little help in here! Dr. Iceberg is coming unglued!"

Eons later I met my mom in the waiting room. She quietly tore a few pages from Redbook Magazine and placed them in her purse and whispered "I'll want to finish this article later. Good casserole recipes!" She then carefully placed the magazine on the shelf between a copy of The National Review and The Plain Truth. While driving home I asked my mom why we needed to take a gun backpacking.

"Oh for God's sake! Did Dr. Rash tell you that?" she asked.

"Yes," I answered.

"Well," my mom explained. "He's just very conservative."

What made someone conservative? I had no idea. I suspected it had something to do with turning off lights to save energy and storing lots of canned foods in the pantry. I wondered, then, why people who were conservative would take guns while backpacking. I wondered if all oral surgeons were conservative. I wondered if oral surgeons went backpacking.

"Mom," I asked, "Will there be any oral surgeons in the Sierras where we're going backpacking?"

"No," she answered. "Heavens no!"

"Phew!" I said. "That's a relief!"

A few years later, while recuperating after one of Dr. Rash's procedures, I propped myself on my bed at home. My cheeks were swollen and stuffed full of bloody gauze. Although I was pickled in percocet, I managed to focus on the coffee table book propped on my lap. It was a Sierran photo book. One photo showed the view from Mt. Sill, the Queen of the Palisades. "Mt. Sill Top" the caption simply stated. (Mt. Sill boasts the best summit view of any Sierran peak). I stared at the photo for minutes and hours and days while I nursed my wounds and sipped Miso soup.

Mt. Sill and the Sierra Nevadas leapt out of those photos and infused me with their beauty. It was healing like a salve, like God's breath.

I return there often lest I forget.