Fourth of July rain

For the past two days it has felt like rain here at Kanuga, damp and cool through the night and early morning, pretty warm and hazy by lunch time, humid with distant rumble of thunder all afternoon. But hour-by-hour, each outdoor activity has "made it" -- from the early morning bird walk to the after supper wall climb. No one has been prevented, by the weather, from doing what he or she desired.

Late this afternoon the rain came very suddenly and the distant storm we'd been hearing for hours moved from the adjoining valley into this one bringing simultaneous lightening and thunder and driving rain. The electricity has gone off and in the direction of the lodge I can hear that the huge tan Generac generator outside the kitchen has come on. Our cottage is in the dark (I'm on battery power) and three Kanuga folks just trotted past the window I'm sitting near intent on seeing why the generator for this line of cottages is still silent. (Several generators were installed on the property following the disastrous ice storm just before Christmas 2005. Duke Power may fail, but Kanuga will not.)

While I'm on staff as the week's chaplain and have responsibilities throughout each day, I have none of the current worries the real staff has. And, I KNOW they're worried. Supper is to be an Independence Day cookout. Were the fifty tables and accompanying chairs and all the bunting already on the lakeside lawn and pavilion when the storm struck? The grills were already hot and cooking. I know that from the aroma wafting in my direction. After supper -- in the place of lakeside vespers just this once -- there was to have been square dance in the lodge parking lot. And, the fireworks. What of the fireworks to be shot from the dam at 9:30?

I know worse things can happen. Rain messing up planned outdoor activities is as old as all time. These good folks, though, working largely unseen to make this guest period a wonderful experience for roughly 400 people, have to be in panic mode at the moment. I suspect they're swinging into some well-discussed plan -- all the while knowing, first, that the skies could clear as suddenly as they darkened and, secondly, that folks who have been coming to guest periods for years are prepared for and can adapt to pretty much anything. This sort of a schedule's undoing, after all, is the stuff of "do you remember the year when?" family legend here at Kanuga.

That remembrance, though, could turn out to be a 4th of July North Korean missle launch. For me, I'm hoping for long-lived memory of the rain and the need for those big tan generators.