The Storm (Sept. 15) Part 1

I had biked all day, and after Kahlotus, I was making slow time uphill through a hot, still evening.   A mile or three from the park entrance that led to the falls, a woman stopped to offer me a ride.  I thought this a bit odd. In hindsight I can't help but wonder if she knew what was coming.

As I neared the park entrance, I saw lightning in the distance on my right.  There were no trees about but I considered slinging my hammock between a road sign and a fence post.

That was when I realized the monster for what it was.  Cresting the southern hills was not a storm, but a nightmare of wind, dirt, and lightning.

It filled the horizon from ground to sky and ate the last of the fading daylight as it came.

I was at the turnoff for the falls park.  2 miles, the sign said, to the campsite.  Downhill and away from the coming wall of sand.  A campsite means the hope of trees, windbreaks, and maybe even a ranger station.  I swung hard to the left and put on the speed.

I learned later that the campsite is closer to 2.5 miles from the turnoff.  The cloud of sand chased me for a mile and better as it obliterated the landscape behind me. Then, about halfway,  the road hung a turn to the right, and the beast took me.  A ranger told me later that the winds were clocked at over 75 miles per hour and the front was moving at 45.

In a single second, the air turned from being dead still to a swirling maelstrom of sand and grit.  Darkness fell like an avalanche.  One minute I could see for miles and the next only a matter of feet at best.

I couldn't keep the bike upright so I let the force carry me off the bike and off the road into a ditch about 6 inches deep at best.  I ducked down as best I could but the cover was next to nothing.  "Is this tornado country?" I started to wonder.  "Is this normal?  How did no one I met today mention this?"

In a brief lull, I could see the vague outlines of a stone outcrop jutting up some 10 yards away.  Hoping for a gulley, I undid my pack, left the bike and jumped the barbed wire.  My bike helmet strap got caught, and I left it behind, dancing and jumping a jig on the wire. 

The stones were just stones; a windbreak the size of a dining room chair.  I broke out my rain poncho/tarp, hunkered down, and made the best of it.  Then came the rain.

So there I was, bundled dry under my tarp with the water rolling down off of it wondering how long it would be before the sky sucked me up or the lightning found my rock. 

My phone was near dead but I fished it out and shot a message off to cousin Pat: "If this windstorm is really a tornado you tell them I love them and I died happy and free."

As last words go, maybe not the best but good enough I figured.

To be continued...