At 12,000 feet, thunderstorms are different. For you at home, watching the jagged silhouettes of the mountains and listening to the dull rumbles in the air, thunderstorms are an amusement. You sit in a chair, sip on hot cocoa or tea and count the seconds between light and sound. You remark that that one was only five miles away, maybe trying to impress someone. Maybe you turn the lights off. If you’re a real suburban warrior, you might even go outside until a stray raindrop hits your face and you run, squealing like a child, back inside.

At 12,000 feet, there’s no cocoa. There’s no chair. There is only blinding light and fearsome noise, so close together that you barely have time to gasp at the flash before the thunder pounds the air out of your lungs. There is rain so dense that you can hardly breathe, and the wind turns innocuous drops of water into a hail of bullets, tearing into the walls of the tent with furious anger. It’s not a storm, it’s a war.

At 12,000 feet, there is no counting the seconds.