Cricket201904

(Lars) #1

could still see the lightning! “After each
flash of lightning, everything turned com-
pletely black. I was lost in a pool of ink...
Even when I kept my eyes closed the light-
ning [was] blinding.”
All the while, it rained. But instead of
rain simply falling down on Rankin, it sur-
rounded him. The parachuting pilot felt
like he was in a swimming pool. He held
his breath. He gasped for air. “I thought I
would drown in midair,” he recalled. Again,
Rankin felt his body lift. Then fall. Then
lift again. One blast of air lifted him under
his parachute. He felt it cover his body like a
wet blanket. Seconds later, his body fell, and
the parachute opened back up.
Rankin rose and fell in the clouds for
more than half an hour. But eventually the
storm blew itself out, and he slowly drifted
toward earth. “It was an enormous relief, see-
ing a little bit of green... I forgot instantly
about my aches and pains.” Blown by forty-
mile-per-hour winds, Rankin prepared to
smash into the ground. Thankfully, his para-
chute caught in a tree. It slowed him down.
Then he was on the ground. “I simply could
not believe that I was on the earth—that I
had survived.”
Rankin untangled himself and got up. He
stumbled to the road and flagged down a car
to take him to town. His body was covered
in ugly bruises from the hail. At the hospital,
he was treated for frostbite and other injuries.
He had been in the air for forty minutes and
come down sixty-five miles from his point of
ejection. But he was alive. He had met a thun-
derstorm where it lived—in the clouds.


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