This summer, my boyfriend's uncle and his significant other went camping in Arkansas. During the night, there was a storm of Biblical proportions. Rain blowing sideways. Hail. The doomsday roar of nearby tornadoes.
"I've been in tornadoes before," he told me. (My eyes were like saucers.) "I know what they sound like. Found out the next day there were seven or eight of them around us."
Luckily, he and his SO escaped unhurt.
I've been caught in nasty weather in the wilderness too, though never quite that nasty. A few years ago, I was paddling in Ontario, and I happened to look up as my group reached a portage on the end of a huge lake. There, scudding across the sky, bearing down on us like a freight train, was what I can only describe as a GIANT ROILING BLACK CLOUD OF DEATH.
When it crossed overhead, the wind hit us like a wall. The sky went black. Lightning struck in the forest around us so freqeuntly there was a surreal strobe-light effect. Trees bent sideways under the force of the howling wind. There was a constant cracking rush and boom of falling trees.
With no place to go - the interior of the forest was a death trap, but standing near the water was a recipe for swift electrocution - we sought shelter behind what appeared to be a large, well-rooted tree.
Apparently, the tree wasn't as well-rooted as we thought. A crack like a bullwhip split the air.
"Move!" someone shouted.
We scrambled out of the way as the tree we had sought shelter behind broke a few feet above its base and toppled over, its massive trunk landing exactly where we had been standing. One group member tripped as she dodged the tree and sprained her ankle badly. She lay moaning with pain in the middle of the portage as the storm raged around us.
At that point, your best bet is to pray. Or, if you're an atheist, do what I did: sing.
A roadside shrine to Mary in rural Ireland, where they love praying and singing.
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