No point in trying to sleep in this morning - we had a very loud thunder storm roar through here at around 6:00 a.m. and it stayed in the area for a while. I really don't like T-storms one bit. They don't seem quite as bad where we live now, but when I was growing up on the farm on the Plain, we were the tallest things atop those fields of ledges, and buildings, stock, electric fences, trees or people were all targets. We grew up with strict instructions: at the first sign of an electric storm, head for cover. I remember more than once watching everyone bale off a load of hay, leaving pitch forks on the load while men and boys alike raced for cover in the barn or house. Usually they'd unhitch the loader and whoever was driving the old Ford truck would "step on it" and take the shortest route to the barn. Sometimes the load stayed on the truck, but just as often a sharp corner or an unexpected bump would shift the load and the truck would arrive at the barn empty.

Once in the house, everyone went into the parlor, a room with few windows and no water pipes, to wait out the storm. Nobody stayed in the kitchen or the bathroom, and nobody was allowed near the telephone. When there was a loud crack and flash of lightning that usually meant a hit close by, the adults immediately scattered to check the barns and the upstairs bedrooms. More than once the lightning came in on water pipes or down the chimney, scorching wood or starting small fires. Iron pipes got welded together, light fixtures literally blown out of the ceiling, the phone completely mangled, electric fence controls ruined, and cows struck down by those awful bolts of lightning. And all too often, a neighbor's farm would go up in smoke. Storms were worse up there, we reasoned, because of the ledges, the many springs, and just plain being so darned high. Thunder storms have always made me nervous, and I don't expect that will ever change.

One of our blog readers mentioned after reading about kayaking on Joe's Brook that he'd always thought Joe's Brook was the one leading into the pond. And he's absolutely right. According to the Vermont Road Atlas, Bog Brook and Steam Mill Brook join Joe's Brook as it flows out of Cole's Pond. It's hard to tell where Steam Mill Brook leaves off and Joe's Brook begins, but it's clearly marked "Joe's Brook" flowing out of Cole's Pond into Joe's. Cole's Pond is at an elevation of about 2,194 ft, which is 619 ft higher than Joe's Pond, and where Joe's Brook empties into the Passumpsic River in Barnet, is at about 1,083 ft. The newspaper article about the whitewater kayakers seemed to be about the exiting Joe's Brook, not the stream that runs into Joe's Pond. Either end, it would be an exciting trip, I guess.

I went to Cabot yesterday, out the South Walden Road, to pick up an album of newspaper clippings my friends Reta and Bill Gamble are donating to the Cabot Historical Society. I stopped to take a picture of some horses just outside the village. I always enjoy going out that road to Rt. 15, and I was delighted to get the album - I'll spend quite a bit of time scanning the clippings and making copies of much of it for our collection. I enjoyed seeing my friends, too. Bill grew up on Cabot Plain and went to the same one-room school as I, and I got to know Reta in high school in Cabot. We had a good visit, and they were able to help me identify some of the people in our photograph collection, so it was a worthwhile trip from all aspects.