At about 5:00 on Tuesday afternoon, my training partner Brian Erb, UVA-Wise Cross-Country Captain Brandon Rogers, and I made the fifteen-minute trip to the Guest River Gorge, a rails-to-trails project that has nominally become Brian's favorite place to run. A run along its fullest extent entails a 5.8-mile southeasterly jaunt that very gradually loses about 500 feet in elevation and then the same stretch in reverse. Because of its soft surface, freedom from traffic (save for the occasional cyclist), and ample shade - an element at a premium in the summer in Southwest Virginia - it's an ideal place to cover an easy (but honest) 11.6 miles.

Forecasts earlier in the day had called for storms riding in from the Tennessee mountains to the south and west. However, when we began the run, it was still in the mid-eighties and humid, with clear skies. We ran shirtless and wore shades and ran at an easy, bantering pace.

By the time we were three miles along, the skies had darkened slightly, but the winds hadn't really picked up. Naturally, the banter turned to weather phenomena; specifically, the worst weather we'd each faced while running. Brian recounted a run in North Dakota across a prairie during a horrific lightning storm in which he'd feared gravely for his safety. Spurning tales of winter storms in New Hampshire - I'd run in so many that even the worst seemed mundane in memory - I recalled a hailstorm that had taken me by surprise during a trek in Colorado Springs and sent me scurrying, drenched and cowed, into the waiting area of a restaurant. Diminutive Brandon, not much for bantering, offered his breathing and quick, pitter-patter footfalls. For whatever reason, the subject of artillery shells came up as well. Remember that.

It had begun to sprinkle by the time we reached the turn-around point and the skies over the mountains on either side had darkened considerably. I now noticed why we'd been unaware of the wind on the "front nine" - it had been at our backs. The stiffening breeze now huffed and chuffed in our faces, carrying a hint of foreboding. The temperature had dropped five, maybe ten degrees. We were soaked with sweat and the wind brought comfort. But there were those black, churning clouds…

The Guest River Gorge is so called for an obvious reason. The Guest itself is to the right of trail travelers on the outward leg and was on our left now; a cliff brackets the trail on the opposite side. Lands studded with tall deciduous trees rise sharply on both sides. The effect is not claustrophobic, but lends a sense of perceptual limitation to trail-travelers, who find drawing directional meaning to any lands outside the confines of the gorge itself difficult. There is forward and back; beyond that, only tall and taller stuff.

So when we were four miles from home, when the clouds came in earnest and the rains began to fall and the first jets of lightning appeared in the distance - seemingly on both sides of the gorge - determining where this attacker was gathering its primary forces was, for whatever good such an endeavor might have been, impossible. We had to outrun some rain, was all.

After that, our surroundings did not grow gradually more unfriendly. Rather, things got worse in stepwise fashion, as if by the throwing of a series of meteorological switches.

When the rains finally came, they came in a torrent and we were three miles - about twenty minutes - from Brian's car. By sheer coincidence, Brandon had just taken off at an ambitious pace a few minutes before, and Brian, explaining, "We sometimes hammer the last three miles up the hill," took off in pursuit after he'd spotted the youngster a football field. I, feeling a bit under the weather (HA! HA!), elected to continue at a modest clip. As a result, when the rains came slamming down and - thanks to the still-rising winds - into our faces, our bare-chested triad had fragmented into three solo harriers.

Okay, I thought, imagine if this were freezing rain and you were dressed like this. I imagine this qualified as a rosy take on a Reznorian downward spiral, but I had other concerns besides getting blasted with a little water: The lightning was getting closer and more frequent and now there were thunderclaps…and rifle-like cracks! The woody death knells of Appalachia's finest on the hills in the (near? Far?) distance. I decided I'd join my fair friends in putting a little spunk into the last quarter of this (hot sunny we're wearing sunglasses, yes) run.

Ahead, Brian had charged a couple hundred yards ahead at least, out of sight (although the efficacy of that sense was rapidly dissolving). Brandon, having been overtaken, was losing steam. I caught him with two miles to go (twelve minutes, I thought) but didn't overtake him. There was no safety in numbers out here, barreling into the elements and miles from any road; yet of course there was. I felt a certain responsibility toward the younger man (but why? Nothing's wrong) and he was still moving along just fine. He emitted the occasional jaunty whoop! It was nice to learn there was something capable of prodding this taciturn fellow into using his vocal cords.

On the heels of that, a sound like the world's biggest matchstick being shot with a cannon. There is no catchy onomatopoeia for that kind of noise.

We were in the belly of the beast and the lightning bolts were seemingly nonstop, like lasers at a Floyd concert, and although I hoped the high ridge to the left would swallow most of them it was clear this was clouds-to-surface stuff, the deadliest kind. I rationally believed that odds were greatly against a strike; we weren't out in the open, and were the shortest figures around.

Small consolation in this million-watt strobe show.

I saw the milepost, shielding my forehead now with a hand so I could better see, as it were. Brandon was flagging but still close. We were no longer moving fast - only as fast as we could. I found myself edging toward the edge of the six-foot-wide path, a mobile form of cowering that was stupid mammalian instinct and would serve no purpose except to smack me in the face with a water-weary branch. After about a half-dozen such sidlings I tabled the behavior. Inanely, I peered down at my watch and thanks to Nature's own Con Edison guessed we were a half-mile from the finish. Brian, as if he'd sadistically orchestrated all of this, might have been a minute from home.

Ahead was a bridge over the Guest, where after crossing beneath us it shot away for the only part of the trail's length, which wasn't much. Great; except now we would be grandly exposed. I recalled with relief that the sixty-yard-long structure was, in accordance with this rustic contrivance of an ecosystem, constructed entirely of wood. I skittered across as fast as I dared on the slick surface. I believed the lightning had abated a notch, but another fearsome crash fell in on the heels of this thought and it was back to reality. The rains were still heavy. Why not? We'd obviously run dead into this sucker of a storm, which was laughing all the while as it scooped us up.

We crossed the Guest without incident. I now felt like sprinting for the car, but what would that accomplish? Gain me a minute on my companion at best, leave him sprawled alone under a tree at worst. I kept my pace and squint-stared into the rains like a half-naked sailor. With the telescoping of time and of this humble path - there could be no more than five hundred yards remaining, a wink of a run but now a potential eternity of slick, packed dirt - I was aware, beneath the familiar physical exertion laced with giddy urgency, that I was quite afraid indeed. Being a physics major, I perceived that lightning did not mix well with a wet and grounded human body, and this particular set of bodies was badly outnumbered by the chaos above, the rate of jagged flashes still almost matching our skittering tempo of footsteps.

Ahead was a tunnel a hundred yards long, the other end of which was exactly a quarter mile from the end of the path. It was dank, drippy, and with the trail beneath it both rough and impossible to see under the best of circumstances, it was ordinarily this run's sole nuisance. Now, it appeared a haven. We plunged inside. The respite from the noise, the rain, and the lightning all at once was eerie. I half-expected to see Brian shacking up in here, but that would have done him little good and despite the minor temptation would do us no good either. It was time to bid this rager of a party goodbye and save the last dance for Smokey the Bear and Woodsy Owl. I let out a cackle. Brandon almost slipped. We shot into the open again and yes it was still a howling shower and the air still split with crashes near and far. But a quarter mile was two minutes at worst. Hell, I thought, this is hardly the jungle of Viet Nam; it's just a run in the rain.

That's when I saw an oddity, perplexing at first: Neat white beads suddenly accumulating on the path in front of me, bouncing and rolling. Styrofoam? Out here?

A split second later the first hailstone crashed off my right shoulder. Behind me, Brandon yelped in surprise and pain. Inanely, I grunted a laugh and thought: Statistically there's no way I won't get hit in the ol' bean. Oh, this was perfect.

A few seconds later a pop almost like a bee sting indeed got me square on top of the head and I grunted again, this time without humor. I shielded my head as best I could with my arms and hands while trying to move in a forward direction as fast as possible (try it sometime!) and recalled our conversation on the outward leg of this trip several centuries ago, when all of the climatological niceties now having their way with our splintered group had been discussed. I wondered when the first mortar round would come screaming into the gorge.

I reached the final stretch, popcorn stings of hail catching me in the shoulders every few seconds and once, smack on a knuckle of one of the hands guarding my head. That last one hurt even more than getting hit in the head had, but this was not enough to persuade me to lower my guard. In truth, I still feared the lightning more. The greedily haphazard electric lumberjacks were taking trees at frighteningly close intervals and the car would really provide us no safety from the electric threat. The Camry was flat in the middle of a parking lot and was its only occupant.

We reached the terminus of the path and scooted left, up the short set of stairs that led to the parking lot. We saw the car and were surprised Brian didn't have it warming up already. We stumbled through the rain and the hail and reached the Camry.

It was empty and locked.

After a moment of hesitation in which I considered crawling under the damn thing, Brandon and I said together: "Bathroom!"

Cursing (did I mention I'd been cursing for twenty minutes in a row?) but game, we headed back down the stairs and up the narrow apron adjoining the end of the path, where sat a small wooden bathroom, a glorified outhouse. Sure enough, Brian was inside. The three of us waited until the rains had begun to abate - maybe fifteen minutes in all - and through the door watched flashes of lightning rip into the countryside like weightless meteorites. I thought: Under normal circumstances, three very nearly naked men in a one-person bathroom probably constitutes a misdemeanor in Virginia.

After we loped back to the car and got inside and toweled off and drove away, we, our motors no longer burning glycogen, rapidly grew chilly. But we all agreed that, while interesting, things really hadn't been all that bad at any time.

We dodged a half-dozen large trees in the road before we got home.

Earlier I made note of a second event. This one I will not consume so much time in telling.

That evening, in the midst of a record fourteen hours of slumber, I experienced a nightmare. For me this is unusual. I cannot, of course, recall everything, but I remember the moldy bread and butter: I was at some sort of University of Vermont alumni function and in talking to someone over my shoulder as I walked away, I pitched over the edge of a lawn, at the end of this dreamscape's safe world, and saw behind me a two-hundred foot drop onto a rocky beach.

Mind you, falling in dreams is archetypal and for me often signifies the dream as at a close and thus bears no trauma. This was very different. This was one hundred percent real, and I was terrified, falling backward in a slow arc and knowing with a soundless scream I was about to die. I gathered speed and closed my eyes as the air rushed past my ears, the wind of finality. How long? How long? NOW?

Then I met the beach and was broken all over. But the dream did not end and I was bent at funny angles but not quite dead, yet. The world went gray as figures conveniently gathered around and made frantic yelping noises and attempted ministrations. Then everything faded, as they say in screenplays, to black.

I woke up almost sobbing with relief and when I had the same dream again as soon as I slipped asleep it was just as bad, and the relief upon awakening was just as potent.