Channeling Lightning

OK, so I did a SW trip and with the storms being more frequent was confined to pavement access the last week of the trip. I went into the Kolob section of Zion for my last trip. The forecast wasn't bad for three days before going in. I expected a chance of "Isolated thunderstorms" by late morning of the third and final hike-out day. The first two days were beautiful and the second evening, just outrageously nice. After hiking for a number of hours up valley I spent the afternoon sitting shirtless on a big flat rock near La Verkin Creek. Dinner time and early evening...terrific. About an hour after going to bed a few clouds showed up and shortly thereafter I could see cloud to cloud lightning was causing the rock in the canyon to glimmer. Well, my "Isolated thunderstorms" the next day turned into a heck of an electrical storm by 10 pm. Only thing is, in beautiful weather I'd put my tent under a nice tall Ponderosa - not the only tall Ponderosa, mind you, but not a small tree either. And it was pouring rain. Now, besides other tall Ponderosas there were tall lightning rods all about in the form of cliffs and buttresses surrounding the creek. The long and short of it is I didn't really feel like moving with the rain and felt that there were many targets, my Ponderosa not being the most significant of them.

So, I'm laying in my tent and questioning my decision on not moving the tent. I'm laying on a blue foam and a full, thick thermarest, see. Not sleeping, mind you, I'm not that big a fan of nearby lightning. Most strikes are at least several seconds, i.e. several thousand feet away. I noticed the cuticle on my right index finger seemed to hurt....must be pressing it against the edge of that thermarest, eh? So, I move my hand; odd, the cuticle still hurts. Gee, the index on my left hand is kind of tingling. No static in my hair, though. If you get the idea, I'm not really liking the situation I'm in. Kaboom....one second....a close one. Hmm. Cuticle, index finger, lightning. Well, I'll be darned if those index fingers didn't do it again. Sure enough, Kaboom. I don't particularly like this pattern, but I think it's not clairvoyance, seems like I'm able to sense when the ground charge is building up just before a nearby strike. If I had my drothers, I'd just as soon not have that information! ....if you know what I mean? Better to just get gried with no warning...no fuss, no muss. But here's the thing: Three times I felt the static, and an instant later, three times I had a very close strike - the only close strikes. So, the way I figure it, I was feeling the static build-up; I was sensitized to lightning. I don't know if it had something to do with the tree, the wet ground, the stream about 100' away, or what. Tell you what, sometimes, I'd be just as happy not knowing what was about to come down... :-[