The heat lightning was sorcery to us. Some kind of rare devilry quietly bursting across the midnight horizon, raving over the dark, distant pine trees. It just didn’t stop. Hundreds of electric blossoms, pink and white, flaring up inside a mountain of clouds.

We’d all left our sleeping bags to watch from the cabin windows. I was afraid we’d soon be swallowed up by green sky storm clouds and flocks of angry tornados. But my oldest cousin whispered, “Heat lighting.”

“It’s harmless,” he said. “At least ... where we are, it is.”

It was dripping humid that night, and the black sky didn’t cool things down one bit. Nothing moved outside the cabin walls, no breeze to sway the scrubby tree branches, no bats to wobble through the air. Even the relentless thrumming of the insects out in the tall grass seemed mute.

It was dripping humid that night, and the black sky didn’t cool things down one bit. Nothing moved outside the cabin walls, no breeze to sway the scrubby tree branches, no bats to wobble through the air. Even the relentless thrumming of the insects out in the tall grass seemed mute.

We watched the lightning for a long time, speaking in hushed little words. So much quieter than we’d been earlier in the day, swimming down at the beach, playing board games around the coffee table, munching on hotdogs and potato chips. We were loud and obnoxious and everything we hollered was the funniest thing we’d ever heard. But now we watched. Small, dim shapes in the window frames, spying on the wilderness at night.

I can’t remember where the adults were. Asleep in the bedroom? Hanging out by the lake? We were old enough to stay by ourselves, so I never really wondered where they were. Adults weren’t on my radar back then.

The heat kept us up most of the night, but somehow we all wandered off to sleep, flailing at rogue mosquitoes, scratching at wood ticks. When morning came, we were tucked deep into our covers, curled up against a chill that crawled across the fields as we snoozed. It murmured a secret message: “Autumn is coming for you.”

But soon the sun hoisted itself up high, boiling away the shadows. We ate cold milk and cereal and got ready for another day on bare feet. Bikes and swimsuits and Kool-Aid stained lips. Another Wisconsin day flooded with hot air and bug bites.

When evening finally came, it came with a billion different stars after a purple sunset. I think we slept a lot easier that next night, too tired to do anything else. We had given summer all we had, left it at the lakeshore and out on the cracked blacktop highway running past the soybeans and the corn and the eerie plantation pines, skinny and silent.

I can’t remember how old I was that year. I can’t remember how tall I was or what I looked like in the mirror. I remember the dirt driveway to the cabin and the birch tree out front. I remember fighting with my sister over basically everything. I remember bottle rockets. My dad’s boat. The cabin’s kitchen table, leftover from my parent’s first house. I remember melancholy trips home on Sunday night.

~

The other evening, as my wife and I ambled through our neighborhood, we glimpsed between the houses and treetops to see a colossal heap of clouds in the west. We crossed a street where the view opened up wide, and suddenly there was lightning, flashing high up in the billowing stacks. It was very far away. But for a moment my chest swelled with awe and anxiousness.

Our kids were trailing a few blocks behind. Little squirrels rambunctious with independence. I don’t think they even noticed the clouds rising up behind them or the gushing electricity trapped inside.

Not yet, at least.