... the national weather service was issuing warnings of "60 mile-per-hour winds" and "one-inch hailstones" ... my last experience with this sort of thing resulted in my driving for several years a dimpled-finish chevrolet impala ... no complaints, since at that time in my life the $4,500 insurance payout went right into my bank account where it was most desperately needed ... this time around, however, knowing that the "totaled for salvage" value of my car is much less than it's actually worth, i decided to get out of dodge ...
... i headed towards the coast, away from the storm ... near china lake i stopped and calculated that i had time to do a bit of wandering ...
... i stopped atop the parameter ridge ... my little town is hidden to the right center of the image, tucked out of sight in the kennebec river valley ... you are looking across the great merrimack trough ... the land i'm standing upon was once an edge section of the european crustal plate ... during one of the many continental collisions, zillions of years ago, the north american plate grabbed ahold and took this piece as its own ... the distant horizon, the mountains of maine, is the true american plate ... a few years ago the 200 or so acres along this ridge sold for around $2,000,000 ...
... i was fascinated by this cloud ... if i had been in kansas, and it was a bit larger, i would've started looking a cellar door ...
... rachael and john pulled off to the side of the road and joined me ... they told me how they often come up to the ridge to watch storms, and how they, too, had been watching the strange wave in the atmosphere ... when the lightning began to strike less than a mile down the road i told them it was probably best we got in our cars before we were fried ... they were very nice and i took an instant liking to them ... i'd bet everyone who meets them does likewise ...
... as i drove north, doing a left-right-left wander, i had to pull over several times when the conditions became so bad safe driving was impossible ... this photograph was taken in a bit of a lull, during the really bad downpours it wasn't worth trying to get a picture ...
... on libby hill i found a house lot being developed ... unlike much of the northeast, in central maine it's still possible for a person or family with relatively moderate income to afford a lot such as this ...
... rather than wooded suburbs, many, many years ago those who are now beneath these stones would've been the generation that would have cut clear and farmed most of this land ...
