| Story on Jan 6, 2013 by Michael McQuilken |
The predecessor of this article was copyright in 1995 and an extract of it appeared in the 1996 Weather Whys and Wonders Wall Calendar. Any content of this article or the photographs which may accompany it cannot be published or posted anywhere without written consent from Michael McQuilken. You may contact Michael directly using the contact info available on the Contact tab of his web site: http://www.michaelmcquilken.com/
On Christmas day, 1994, my sister gave me a copy of the 1995 Weather Whys and Wonders desktop calendar. I had not seen it before, so when I opened it, I was surprised to find that the cover photo was of my brother Sean and me with our hair sticking up into the air. I had not seen that photo for years, and to see it on the cover of a calendar was completely unexpected. I asked my sister where she had the calendar made for the gift. She told me that it was not made for me, that they were in every bookstore she had visited.
The photo was taken on August 20, 1975. We did not know it at the time, but Sean and I were in for the shock of our lives – literally!
At the sight of the photo, the domestic scene of my father’s kitchen and the holiday chatter diffused into a long-gone summer day at Sequoia National Park in the southern Sierra Nevada. I had just completed hiking down from Yosemite National Park on the John Muir Trail, and my family had met up with me for their summer vacation in Kings Canyon National Park.
After a week in Kings Canyon, we moved our camp up into Sequoia National Park. On one of the days in the park, we drove around to do a small number of hikes. One of them was to the top of Morro Rock. On that infamous day, my brothers Sean and Jeff, my sister Mary and her friend Margie, and I were on our way to the top of Moro Rock, a rounded exfoliation dome and one of the favorite attractions in the park. The sky was overcast with patches of dark clouds, and there was light, intermittent rain.
Shortly after we reached the top and were enjoying the view with about six other visitors, someone noticed that our hair was standing on end. At the time, we thought this was humorous. I took a photo of Mary, and then Mary took a photo of Sean and me. I raised my right hand into the air and the ring I had on began to buzz so loudly that everyone could hear it. Everyone was in a jovial mood, even laughing, at the site of our hair sticking up. No one realized what was happening and that we were all in great danger of a lightning strike.
All of a sudden I felt a strong drop in the temperature. At one moment it was 65 to 70 degrees F, and the next moment it felt like it was below freezing. There was no wind, but it immediately started to hail. We decided to get down off of the rock, not for fear of lightning, but to avoid the pelting hail.
About halfway down, Moro Rock and a smaller granite prominence converge, producing a narrow saddle. When Sean reached this point, I was about 10 feet behind him, with Mary, Margie and Jeff behind me. Suddenly, I was immersed in the brightest light I have ever seen. I moved my head from side to side and all I could see was bright white light, similar in appearance to arc welding light. This next part is strange. I distinctly remember feeling weightless, and that my feet were no longer touching the ground. For some reason, it felt like a number of seconds transpired, even though I realize that lightning strikes are instantaneous. A deafening explosion followed, and I found myself on the ground with the others. Sean was collapsed and huddled on his knees. Smoke was pouring from his back. I rushed over to him and checked his pulse and breathing. He was still alive. I put out the embers on his back and elbows and carried him down the path towards the parking lot, with the rest of the group following.
We had almost reached the parking lot when we found a woman beating furiously on her husband’s chest. His skin was blue and there was a small burn mark near his heart. Mary and the others took Sean down to the parking lot and I stayed and helped with CPR until the paramedics arrived. Unfortunately, the man, Lawrence Brady, died.
Apparently there was only one bolt of lightning that had split into several fingers. One hit Sean, another hit Lawrence Brady, and a third finger of lightning blew a shoe off of a man who was closer to the top than we were. We learned later that the strongest bolt hit a man who was still at the top taking photographs with his camera. He survived, but the camera he was holding was blown into quarter-inch fragments, and his clothing had disintegrated - leaving only the seams of his jacket and pants. All of the hair on his body was completely burned off, and from what I have been told, it had never grown back. He was unconscious at the time, and did not recover consciousness for about 6 months.
The lightning finger that hit Sean, then 12 years old, left him with third-degree burns on his back and elbows. Luckily, Sean was not completely grounded when the lightning hit him, and so he was not killed. Perhaps that was because we were near a metal handrail. I conjecture that the lightning jumped from Sean’s elbow to the railing, along which it travelled down to Lawrence Brady. The lightning also continued down the railing to the parking lot, where it hit a drinking fountain made of stone and concrete that was in front of where my parents were sitting in their truck. The drinking fountain exploded, leaving only scattered stones on the ground in the parking lot.
Almost every time I tell this story in public, someone asks me if my brother or I gained any “super” powers or something from the strike. I don’t feel that my DNA was reprogrammed or that there were changes to the way I produce or process neurotransmitters. The only thing I can think of is a great respect for the power of lightning, and that I do not summit peaks if I sense the slightest chance that there will be a thunderstorm. However, I have always had a lot of energy since that date. A decade of my life was spent writing software, practicing drums for 3-4 hours a day, teaching up to 38 students, and performing, recording, or rehearsing all in the same day.
Epilogue
After receiving the Weather Whys and Wonders desk calendar back in 1994, I began an investigation into how they would have obtained a copy of the photograph of Sean and me. The publisher of the calendar had downloaded it from NOAA. However, the photograph available in public domain is damaged and in low-resolution. I traced the photograph’s inclusion in the NOAA archives to a sequence of events. My mother had remained in touch with the rangers that had helped Sean and arranged for his transportation to the Exeter Hospital. She had mailed them a copy of the photograph which they had converted into a slide and used at campfire programs to warn visitors about the dangers of lightning. I have also heard rumors that at one point in time, the photograph was displayed at the entry to the Morro Rock trail. I do not know who eventually obtained the low-resolution copy and posted it on NOAA.
Ever since the experience of what appeared to be a perception of time slowing down where I felt like I was weightless and surrounded by white light, I have wondered how we process our sense of time. I feel that this experience helped to set up the sequence of events that led to my discipline of meditation.
When one meditates and has reached the point where the mind becomes very still, we notice that thoughts are not a continuous flow of one into another. They are momentary discrete events which have space between them. It is similar in respect to movie film which is composed of individual frames, but takes on the illusion of a continuum when it is projected onto a screen as a movie. So, my hypothesis is that when we experience the effect of time speeding up or slowing down, it is the frames per second of our thoughts that have either sped up or slowed down. I do not have any empirical data to support my theory, but it satisfies my curiosity for the experience with time dilation.
Copyright © 2013 by Michael McQuilken
On Christmas day, 1994, my sister gave me a copy of the 1995 Weather Whys and Wonders desktop calendar. I had not seen it before, so when I opened it, I was surprised to find that the cover photo was of my brother Sean and me with our hair sticking up into the air. I had not seen that photo for years, and to see it on the cover of a calendar was completely unexpected. I asked my sister where she had the calendar made for the gift. She told me that it was not made for me, that they were in every bookstore she had visited.
The photo was taken on August 20, 1975. We did not know it at the time, but Sean and I were in for the shock of our lives – literally!
At the sight of the photo, the domestic scene of my father’s kitchen and the holiday chatter diffused into a long-gone summer day at Sequoia National Park in the southern Sierra Nevada. I had just completed hiking down from Yosemite National Park on the John Muir Trail, and my family had met up with me for their summer vacation in Kings Canyon National Park.
After a week in Kings Canyon, we moved our camp up into Sequoia National Park. On one of the days in the park, we drove around to do a small number of hikes. One of them was to the top of Morro Rock. On that infamous day, my brothers Sean and Jeff, my sister Mary and her friend Margie, and I were on our way to the top of Moro Rock, a rounded exfoliation dome and one of the favorite attractions in the park. The sky was overcast with patches of dark clouds, and there was light, intermittent rain.
Shortly after we reached the top and were enjoying the view with about six other visitors, someone noticed that our hair was standing on end. At the time, we thought this was humorous. I took a photo of Mary, and then Mary took a photo of Sean and me. I raised my right hand into the air and the ring I had on began to buzz so loudly that everyone could hear it. Everyone was in a jovial mood, even laughing, at the site of our hair sticking up. No one realized what was happening and that we were all in great danger of a lightning strike.
All of a sudden I felt a strong drop in the temperature. At one moment it was 65 to 70 degrees F, and the next moment it felt like it was below freezing. There was no wind, but it immediately started to hail. We decided to get down off of the rock, not for fear of lightning, but to avoid the pelting hail.About halfway down, Moro Rock and a smaller granite prominence converge, producing a narrow saddle. When Sean reached this point, I was about 10 feet behind him, with Mary, Margie and Jeff behind me. Suddenly, I was immersed in the brightest light I have ever seen. I moved my head from side to side and all I could see was bright white light, similar in appearance to arc welding light. This next part is strange. I distinctly remember feeling weightless, and that my feet were no longer touching the ground. For some reason, it felt like a number of seconds transpired, even though I realize that lightning strikes are instantaneous. A deafening explosion followed, and I found myself on the ground with the others. Sean was collapsed and huddled on his knees. Smoke was pouring from his back. I rushed over to him and checked his pulse and breathing. He was still alive. I put out the embers on his back and elbows and carried him down the path towards the parking lot, with the rest of the group following.
We had almost reached the parking lot when we found a woman beating furiously on her husband’s chest. His skin was blue and there was a small burn mark near his heart. Mary and the others took Sean down to the parking lot and I stayed and helped with CPR until the paramedics arrived. Unfortunately, the man, Lawrence Brady, died.
Apparently there was only one bolt of lightning that had split into several fingers. One hit Sean, another hit Lawrence Brady, and a third finger of lightning blew a shoe off of a man who was closer to the top than we were. We learned later that the strongest bolt hit a man who was still at the top taking photographs with his camera. He survived, but the camera he was holding was blown into quarter-inch fragments, and his clothing had disintegrated - leaving only the seams of his jacket and pants. All of the hair on his body was completely burned off, and from what I have been told, it had never grown back. He was unconscious at the time, and did not recover consciousness for about 6 months.
The lightning finger that hit Sean, then 12 years old, left him with third-degree burns on his back and elbows. Luckily, Sean was not completely grounded when the lightning hit him, and so he was not killed. Perhaps that was because we were near a metal handrail. I conjecture that the lightning jumped from Sean’s elbow to the railing, along which it travelled down to Lawrence Brady. The lightning also continued down the railing to the parking lot, where it hit a drinking fountain made of stone and concrete that was in front of where my parents were sitting in their truck. The drinking fountain exploded, leaving only scattered stones on the ground in the parking lot.
Almost every time I tell this story in public, someone asks me if my brother or I gained any “super” powers or something from the strike. I don’t feel that my DNA was reprogrammed or that there were changes to the way I produce or process neurotransmitters. The only thing I can think of is a great respect for the power of lightning, and that I do not summit peaks if I sense the slightest chance that there will be a thunderstorm. However, I have always had a lot of energy since that date. A decade of my life was spent writing software, practicing drums for 3-4 hours a day, teaching up to 38 students, and performing, recording, or rehearsing all in the same day.
Epilogue
After receiving the Weather Whys and Wonders desk calendar back in 1994, I began an investigation into how they would have obtained a copy of the photograph of Sean and me. The publisher of the calendar had downloaded it from NOAA. However, the photograph available in public domain is damaged and in low-resolution. I traced the photograph’s inclusion in the NOAA archives to a sequence of events. My mother had remained in touch with the rangers that had helped Sean and arranged for his transportation to the Exeter Hospital. She had mailed them a copy of the photograph which they had converted into a slide and used at campfire programs to warn visitors about the dangers of lightning. I have also heard rumors that at one point in time, the photograph was displayed at the entry to the Morro Rock trail. I do not know who eventually obtained the low-resolution copy and posted it on NOAA.
Ever since the experience of what appeared to be a perception of time slowing down where I felt like I was weightless and surrounded by white light, I have wondered how we process our sense of time. I feel that this experience helped to set up the sequence of events that led to my discipline of meditation.
When one meditates and has reached the point where the mind becomes very still, we notice that thoughts are not a continuous flow of one into another. They are momentary discrete events which have space between them. It is similar in respect to movie film which is composed of individual frames, but takes on the illusion of a continuum when it is projected onto a screen as a movie. So, my hypothesis is that when we experience the effect of time speeding up or slowing down, it is the frames per second of our thoughts that have either sped up or slowed down. I do not have any empirical data to support my theory, but it satisfies my curiosity for the experience with time dilation.
Copyright © 2013 by Michael McQuilken
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