"Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity." ~ Joseph Addison

Photographed from McFadden peak, which is another place that is in my "backyard" on the edge of the Sierra Ancha Wilderness, in the Tonto National Forest. If the lightning strike was not there, you would see the outline of Four Peaks mountain range in its place...the thrust of this storm was centered right over my land, and while trying to ride the storm out, I gave up when the hail started, and escaped 5 miles north to this peak where I could watch the storm above. When I returned to my land the storm was over, and the other locals in the area told me that was the worst in 2 years. And while falling asleep to the sound of running flood washes nearby and the drip of rain on the tent from the Oak and Pine trees above, I was in perpetual serenity.