Once, in the Navarro region of Spain, I witnessed a fleeting moment of unparalleled beauty.
The tiny village was settling in for the evening but my wife and I were both restless so we decided on a walk into the surrounding fields. The air was warm and dry and smelled of the grape harvest. An autumn thunderstorm was building, but the horizon was clear, a crimson sunset presenting itself as a band of raw color beneath the dark skirt of the cloud. I’d never before (and never since) seen the combination of epic sunset/thundercloud, and both of us were awestruck.
Even though not a drop had yet fallen, I could smell the rain, feel the hair-raising static of impending lightning. Above us the belly of the cloud grew dark and heavy as the light failed.
Just as the sunset reached the precious blood-red phase craved by photographers, lightning began impaling the ground to the west. The setting was extraordinary in itself, but what happened next I remember in cinematic, slow-motion detail: as the lightning poured from the bottom of the cloud, a long-legged, dark-haired boy on a muscular stallion materialized out of the darkness and thundered across the field in front of us at full-racehorse gallop, leaning into the horse’s mane, his loose cotton shirt streaming behind him like the tail of a meteor.
All we could do was watch, dumbstruck. Like an idiot I never thought to raise my camera, not that any photo could’ve done justice to the moment.
Nothing could have made it more breathtaking. From the smell of the rain on the dirt to the force of the wind to the unimaginable spectacle of the sunset-lit thunderstorm to the boy’s dark skin against the rippling muscles of the horse, it was one of the most remarkable sensory experiences of my life.
Seconds later, the boy vanished into the darkness, receding hooves mingling with the thunder from the sky. Then the heavens opened up and the deluge sent us running back for our hostel.
Everyone has a handful of specific moments that are burned into their brain, unexpected experiences where the sublime converges with situation and mood. For me, these include standing on the crown of a Hawaiian volcano watching the lunar penumbra rush across the Pacific in the seconds before a solar eclipse, encountering a gargantuan owl at midnight on the brink of a Utah canyon, and watching my shadow cross the grass as an enormous green meteor turned the night sky to day just before breaking into a thousand flaming fragments.
At least for me, the common denominator for all these extraordinary moments was being outside my comfort zone. Had I stayed home, stayed inside to watch TV, I would never have experienced any of them. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that in order to live an extraordinary life, it’s necessary to intentionally place yourself in extraordinary situations.
