Last night severe thunderstorms, damaging winds, hail and tornadoes roared through our region. Luckily we experienced no damage and were able to simply listen and watch Mother Nature’s orchestra perform. As staccato flashes of lightning,  the booming tympany of thunder, the chords of rain,  and the thrumming of hail (Kimberly–”thrumming” is in honor of you!) entertained me, my mind started to wander (most of the time, it wanders back to me–which is a good thing!).

I began to consider “hail”—that I’ve been in 3 hailstorms in 3 weeks (a life record for me, perhaps, but not one worth celebrating!):

The first hailstorm of this series was when I was in the Himilayas above Shimla, India. The General Manager of Wildflower Hall, an Oberoi hotel, invited a group of us on a picnic on the grounds of a historic cottage, the Peak. When the skies turned threatening and the wind started to howl, we decided to wait a bit to see if the storm would pass. The storm passed quickly and we piled into the 4-wheel drive vehicles ready for our picnic. Apparently, some clouds thought they were invited to the picnic, too, and they followed us to the cottage. The view was spectacular and the gardens looked like Monet might have painted them. Soon, not wanting to be left behind, wind and rain joined the clouds and our picnic moved indoors. We were invited to explore the cottage (can you call a 3,000 square foot home a cottage???) as the servers scurried around to prepare for our indoor picnic. This was no “picnic” (as I said in an earlier blog), it was a feast! For me, the dessert was being able to roam around the Peak, look at the rooms, the layers of history in the decor, and for a moment in time, I was experiencing 19th century Shimla!

The hail had pummeled the cottage, as it had for decades, and the grounds were covered in balls of white ice. The hail gave me an opportunity to pause, to leisurely reflect, and to absorb the beauty of the Shimla, the Himalayas and to give thanks that I was given this gift of experience.