Lightning

"We had for some time seen a thunder-shower coming up from the west over the woods of the island.... As we lay huddled together under the tent,... we listened to some of the grandest thunder which I ever heard,—rapid peals, round and plump, bang, bang, bang, in succession, like artillery from some fortress in the sky; and the lightning was proportionally brilliant. The Indian said, "It must be good powder." All for the benefit of the moose and us, echoing far over the concealed lakes. I thought it must be a place which the thunder loved, where the lightning practiced to keep its hand in, and it would do no harm to shatter a few pines."
--Henry David Thoreau (The Maine Woods, 1864)