Most of the time, thunderstorms are just a nuisance. They postpone the feasts for ants at picnics, make convertible owners scramble to put up the top on their rides, and overall cause us to resemble droopier versions of ourselves. There is always a chance you could be caught in a shower and get soaking wet, but mostly you find a dry place to watch the whole show. I had a much more intimate relationship with storms as a child on our farm in the wide open expanses of Eastern Colorado. Storms can teach you a lot about life.

Our farm on the Central High Plains was part of what was once called The Great American Desert. It was thought to be vast, treeless, and not able to support agriculture. Many in the 1800s believed it was a barrier to cross for better chances in the gold and silver camps of The Rockies. But trees grew if you planted them and farmers could rely on the average 13 inches of rain a year to coax crops from the soil. Mother Nature at times blessed the wheat farm I grew up on with life-giving rain and other times we felt like it tried to wipe us off the map.

Summer storms brought excitement and dread. Late June through July is a critical time in Eastern Colorado when the wheat crops near ripening for harvest. It is not the time you want rain. Wheat optimally needs to contain 11%-13% moisture to be harvested. Less moisture and the wheat “burns” with the kernels shriveling and losing nutritional value. Too much moisture and the wheat is “wet”, making it hard to harvest and likely to rot. On afternoons when clouds gather, farmers nervously become “instant weathermen”. They try to define cloud color, if clouds are shrinking or growing, and how much the air smells of rain. Light to medium blue is a chance of maybe something mild while deepening dark blue to black is ominous. Sometimes the clouds are black with growing billows near the top to form the all too familiar shape of a blacksmith’s anvil. And the worst sign of things to come are the streaks of white against dark clouds, foretelling of meaning hail. These roving monsters could roll past in the distance, leaving golden sunshine after their darkness and the soil with the earthy mineral smell of life-affirming moisture. Or they could shift and come right over the top of you with full fury.

When the dark storms come with rain, lightening, and hail, it is like the scene in the movie Fantasia where a storm rolls down from Mount Olympus on the country below. Light changes to dark and even the mythical creatures run for cover. In the cartoon, only a fragile human and his donkey are left to face the storm with no idea of what was coming. Across the wide, largely treeless expanse of horizon around our farm, storms can be seen 40miles away. But they move quickly across the plains and you may only have 30min to prepare for them. Dark covers light, the day’s heat that was dry the maturing wheat drops 20 degrees, and then the storm’s raw power is upon you.

During wheat harvest you fear the hail first. The summer heat bounces pea-sized hail up and down in the upper atmosphere, growing its size to a golf ball, then a baseball, sometimes to grapefruit size. One summer a black storm raced over Arriba, the small town near our farm, in a full frontal assault of grapefruit-sized hail. It pummeled cars, shredded awnings, and hit roofs like the first barrage of an alien attack from the sky. Women and children struggled to uselessly move cars and pets under trees or in to buildings. As the wind picked up, radio alerts identified tornadoes skipping along the highway as they followed the hot air created by the highway’s asphalt. Most of the men could not help because they were in the countryside fighting their own battles.

In the harvest fields, a violent storm sounds the alarm to move lumbering harvest equipment, trucks, and pickups out of the field quickly. People frantically try to cover the harvested grain in the trucks as they fight the tarps that flap in the gusting wind. Shouts become lost in the confusion and the swirling dust from the storm’s wind. Potential hail is a real danger, but if the rains catch you in the field with a downpour, everything will become so mired in mud that only tractors will be to extract them. If lucky, the storm blows past and it is another successful harvest day. But if the storm unleashes its load, pandemonium can ensue.

Once during wheat harvest on our farm, a small crew of 12 people from three families struggled to move two combines, three heavily loaded grain trucks, and several service vehicles out of the harvest field before the rains hit. Just after the last truck left the field, the bottom dropped out of the clouds with a leaden sheet of rain. In 30 minutes over 8 inches of down pouring rain fell. People taking refuge in a truck 15 feet away could not be seen. Instant rivers formed as the slightly rolling land channeled the water into min streams and dry depressions spilled over with rapid flash floods. Vehicles parked too close to the edge of roads could roll over as the hard-packed dirt and gravel turned to goo and eroded. Two-way radio calls began to be heard among our crew, making sure everybody was accounted for.

After an hour when the rain subsided as quickly as it came, we viewed the damage. The entire standing wheat crop had vanished. Acre after acre, turning in to mile after mile of wheat, once standing in fields, was now flattened level with the earth. The entire reason for the farm year simply was no more. The income for a family to buy food and pay bank debt for operating expenses for the past year and into the next was in the form of grain plants so flat that you scarcely saw them unless walking in the field itself. The rain had fallen hard with most of the wheat knocked out of the plants and now laying on the ground. There was no way to recover it. Most family farms live on such a shoestring that they cannot afford crop insurance. In a roll of the dice Mother Nature won and the house took everything.

Later the collection of our three farm families that had banded together to cut wheat, ironically to finish the harvest faster, gathered in a small farmhouse to regroup. Hard-as-nails grown men, grimy from labor and soaked to the bone, were speechless about what to do or how to survive total crop failure. Some openly wept at how close we were to pulling in the reward of our efforts and how all seemed lost. Children were asked to leave the room. In the end, the farmers and their families did what they always have – let it go and move on. I will never forget the scene you are not supposed to see of men broken and in defeat. Fathers unable to provide for their families. But I also remember my father, humbled and beside himself, helping console the others a midst his own loss.

Farmers are resilient, not because of blind faith that defies reality or a simplistic view of the world that lumps them into a stereotype of just existing to raise crops or animals. Farmers are realists and optimists at the same time. You learn from failure and adapt as there is little middle ground. Much in life is out of our control, except how you respond to it. As my grandparents suffered through the 1930s in what was later known to be the geographic heart of the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression in Oklahoma, they focused on the promise that each day was a new opportunity to stand up, literally dust yourself off, and start anew; the alternative was the end of their way of life and possibly their family and future. Even on the darkest of days for wheat farmers, the news that the per bushel price is up for Hard Red Winter Wheat on the Kansas City Market is enough to raise spirits. Some days, small things are progress.

Life really isn’t about how we deal with success and victory. What matters are the times when you are tested or struck down and whether you get back up. Fundamentally, it doesn’t matter if a person is defiant or resolute or has a plan for bouncing back. As the late Texas governor Anne Richards once said, “Half of life is suiting up and showing up”. Storms pass. Just getting up for another day is sometimes all that matters.

~Mason