When a bolt hits close to you, close enough to hear the static, close enough to see the little smoke ring rise from the ground, it is a sobering experience. All you want to do is find a place to hide from a threat that hits before you hear it. I've had this experience dozens of times in the mountains of Colorado, second to Florida for lightning deaths, and it is like nearly stepping on a rattlesnake, an experience I also count in the dozens.

I've never been hit by lightning, but I have been enveloped, for a brief but terrifing moment, by St. Elmo's fire, while on the summit of a "fourteener" (14,000+ feet). My hair was wet with rain and full of pea sized hail and yet it managed to stand on end. The world was blue. My skin danced and my heart skipped a beat.

I got lucky.